Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Iran has achieved self-sufficiency in building “vaccine-producing” centrifuge machines, a regime official claimed on Tuesday, Tehran’s semi-official state news agency Fars reported.

According to the report, Mostafa Qaneyee, head of the country’s Pasteur Drug and Vaccine Production Institute, told reporters in Tehran, “We produced two centrifuges last year, including ultra and tubular centrifuges, in cooperation with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).”

Referring to Iran’s new zonal centrifuge, Qaneyee said, “Fortunately, now we have the ability to produce this type of centrifuge in cooperation with the AEOI.”

According to the report, speaking at a ceremony a year and a half ago, AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi announced plans to manufacture a newer generation of such centrifuges — with a rotating power of 100,000 rounds per minute — within eight months.

“We are making joint efforts with the health ministry to build an all-inclusive special hospital which includes different types of equipment for radiotherapy,” Salehi said at the time.

Regime officials did not clarify, however, the connection between the medical establishment and the body responsible for the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Though Iran has maintained that its nuclear facilities are for peaceful purposes, the West is skeptical about any activity involving the building and developing of centrifuges.

As The Algemeiner reported last month, ahead the one-year anniversary of the signing of the nuclear deal with world powers, the AEOI boasted the testing of a new generation of centrifuges for nuclear use. These centrifuges, unveiled in January, were purported to be 15 times more powerful than the ones already in its possession.