Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Sunday that the Islamic Republic has attained its long sought after goal of running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its controversial nuclear program, state media reported.

Technicians work at the reactor building of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, some 750 miles south of Teheran.
Photo: AP

Dancers perform as they hold capsules of uranium hexaflouride, or UF6 gas during a ceremony in Mashhad, Iran's holiest city earlier this year.
Photo: AP

The UN Security Council had threatened to impose a third round of sanctions against the country if it didn't freeze its uranium enrichment program which Iran maintains is for peaceful energy purposes, but the US says is to hide a weapons program.

"The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week," the state television Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Meanwhile, the US has drawn up plans to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities in three days by carrying out large-scale air strikes against over a thousand targets, a national security expert told the Sunday Times.

According to the report, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told the Times that the Pentagon plans to "take out the entire Iranian military" and was not interested in conducting "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The US military, said Debat, arrived at the conclusion that "whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action