The experts who predict Iran is 10 years away from a nuclear weapon don’t have a very good track record for atomic prognostication; they were wrong about North Korea, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Libya, wrong about Pakistan, and wrong about India. In fact, I can’t recall a time when they were right.

And—imagine my surprise!—now it looks like they’re wrong about Iran, too. New worry rises after Iran claims nuclear steps. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Of all the claims that Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they are planning to confront Tehran about it this week.

The assertion involves Iran’s claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran’s path to developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret program - based on the black market offerings of the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan - separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.

Then on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Tehran was “presently conducting research” on the P-2 centrifuge, boasting that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers. Centrifuges are tall, thin machines that spin very fast to enrich, or concentrate, uranium’s rare component, uranium 235, which can fuel nuclear reactors or atom bombs.