pugnacious
campaigner and appears to believe he's got a decent chance of winning.
The United States has downplayed the significance of what Iran called two major advances in its controversial nuclear programme. Tehran said it had loaded Iranian-made
nuclear fuel rods
into a research reactor in north Tehran. It also said that a new generation of
centrifuges
had been put into operation at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. At a briefing in Washington, the US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the announcements didn't amount too much.
"We frankly don't see a lot new here. This is not big news. In fact, it seems to have been
hyped
. The Iranians have for many months been putting out calendars of accomplishments, and based on their own calendars, they are many, many months behind. This strikes us as calibrated mostly for a domestic audience."
The head of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said he's confident that a decision on a second Greek bailout will be taken on Monday.
He was speaking after eurozone finance ministers held a conference call to discuss what more Greece had to do to secure a bailout worth 130bn. Mr Juncker said the Greek government had found a way to cut 325m more from its budget. He also said that the finance ministers wanted mechanisms to
monitor
the Greek economy.
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