Iran has now doubled its capacity to produce highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium: Report: Iran has expanded nuke program.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium by successfully executing the process with a second network of centrifuges, a semiofficial news agency reported Friday, sending a defiant new message to the U.N. Security Council.

Council members are working on a draft resolution that would impose limited sanctions on the Islamic republic because of its refusal to cease enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a civilian nuclear reactor or fissile material for a warhead.

The Iranian Students News Agency quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran has successfully begun injecting gas into a second network of centrifuges.

“We are injecting gas into the second cascade, which we installed two weeks ago,” the official said, according to ISNA.

The news agency said the second cascade had doubled Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium.

Meanwhile, France says this is no surprise. They knew it was coming. They just don’t care.

France’s Foreign Ministry called Iran’s expansion of its nuclear program a “negative signal” that should be taken to account at U.N. talks over possible sanctions.

A spokesman for the ministry, Jean-Baptiste Mattei, said the Iranian announcement was not a great surprise because the International Atomic Energy Agency had said in August that Iran was developing new nuclear capacities.

“The door to negotiations is always open, but at the same time the priority goes to the negotiations for a U.N. Security Council resolution,” Mattei said at a news conference.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, expressed support for sanctions against Iran but insisted that they be temporary and reversible.