And they will do it again if need be, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in an interview with the national public broadcaster ABC Radio.

Rudd would not go into details such as what was denied and when the shipments were to be sent. But he said it was "entirely appropriate" that Defense Minister John Faulkner used his powers under the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1995 to stop the shipments.

"We are party to international obligations, we exercise those obligations, because we believe we must play the role of a responsible international citizen," he said on an ABC Radio morning news program.

Rudd said the federal government had to look at "their consistent thumbing of the nose to the International Atomic Energy Agency" and the Iranian attitude towards the international community in general. It meant the only option is for a hard line to be taken against Tehran.

"If you look at the threat to regional and global peace which Iran poses in its current nuclear weapons program, there is no alternative other than robust international action including in areas such as this. As to the detail of every shipment, as I'm sure you'll anticipate, I do not propose to go to that level of detail."

The Australian newspaper claimed that Rudd reacted to its earlier report that a shipment of pumps had been seized on the belief that they could have been used as part of a cooling system at a nuclear plant.

The 22-page act notes that the government can, after seizing the goods, use them in a court of law and may, if desired, destroy them at any time.

The law had been used only once before 2005, the Australian newspaper reported, to block a shipment to Iran in that year. But in the past 12 months it has been used several times as the diplomatic and trade war with Iran intensifies.

Rudd's comments come after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranian state TV that Tehran would now send its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment under a U.N. deal.

The move is an about-face for Ahmadinejad, according to a report by the British Broadcasting Corp. He has consistently argued that Iran's nuclear program is for only peaceful purposes and has fought against international sanctions on exporting to Iran.

Last month diplomats said Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it did not accept the terms of the U.N. deal, but it would accept a simultaneous exchange on its own territory.

The deal was agreed in October between Iran, the IAEA and the so-called P5+1 countries, named after the six countries backing it -- the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Under the terms, Iran would send about 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France to be processed into fuel for a research reactor, the BBC said.

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