Reuters ,Tehran, 26 November 2008 (excerpts) – Iran now has 5,000 working uranium enrichment centrifuges, a senior official was quoted as saying on Wednesday, signalling an expansion of work the West fears is aimed at making nuclear bombs.
“Now we have 5,000 running centrifuges,” Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, told the official IRNA news agency. “Suspension of nuclear enrichment is not in our vocabulary.”

The U.N. nuclear agency watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), earlier this month said Iran had 3,800 centrifuges enriching uranium and that another 2,200 were being gradually introduced.

In a later version of the IRNA story, Aghazadeh was quoted as saying Iran had more than 5,000 working centrifuges and planned further expansion of the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.
Another senior Iranian official, Deputy Foreign Minister Alireza Sheikh Attar, in August said the Islamic Republic had 4,000 working centrifuges.