TEHRAN — Iran has enriched more than 120 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium, the head of the country’s atomic energy agency said on national television Saturday night.
“We have passed 120 kilograms,” said Muhammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. “We have more than that figure.”
Eslami said the research reactor in Tehran was supposed to receive the fuel from other parties to the country’s 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but that it was not delivered.
“Our people know well that they (Western powers) were meant to give us the enriched fuel at 20 percent to use in the Tehran reactor, but they haven’t done so,” he added.
“If our colleagues do not do it, we would naturally have problems with the lack of fuel for the Tehran reactor.”
In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had boosted its stocks enriched above the percentage allowed in the 2015 deal with world powers.
It estimated that Iran had 84.3 kilos of uranium enriched to 20 percent (up from 62.8 kilos when the IAEA last reported in May).
Under the 2015 agreement China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States had agreed to lift sanctions against Iran if Tehran cut back its nuclear program.
But a year after then U.S. president Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018, Tehran began scaling back its commitments under the agreement after the other signatories failed to support and protect the Islamic Republic.
Iran has since begun enriching uranium up to 60 percent, utilized more centrifuges, produced uranium metal and is building more advanced centrifuges.
Eslami said Iran can now produce all kinds of nuclear fuel, but “none of our products and actions are outside the legal mechanism defined in the Safeguards Agreement.”
On Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said he was optimistic that talks on reviving the 2015 deal would make progress, provided Washington fully resumed its commitments.
A main concern of Iran in any talks to rescue the 2015 nuclear deal, the minister said, would be around ways to verify the lifting of U.S. sanctions.
Top officials in the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi have said they are reviewing the files of six rounds of negotiations that ended in late July, and will return to the Austrian capital soon. But they have also said they will only engage in negotiations that will lead to the removal of U.S. sanctions.
“Of course, we will soon return to the Vienna talks and we are keeping our eyes on the issue of verification and receiving the necessary guarantees for the implementation of commitments by the Western parties,” Amir-Abdollahian said in Damascus.
Sabotage attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and the November assassination of a top nuclear scientist – all of which has been blamed on the occupying regime of Israel – prompted the parliament to ratify a new law, which calls for ramped-up nuclear activity until the U.S. sanctions are lifted.
Eslami said, “The production of uranium metal may be considered a danger in the eyes of the Americans, but we will do what is necessary for our national interests.”
The nuclear chief also pointed to a disagreement Iran had with the IAEA last month over an agreement reached in Tehran that would allow inspectors to service monitoring cameras at nuclear sites and replace their memory cards.
Eslami said after Iran insisted it would not grant access to a site in Karaj that was subject to a sabotage attack earlier this year, the agency did not pursue the matter.
The nuclear agency had previously said it needed access to the site to replace monitoring equipment that was damaged or destroyed during the attack on the facility.
The IAEA “did not take a stance or condemn the terrorist operation on this site, which practically encourages these terrorist attacks”, he said.
Eslami said the IAEA plays into the hands of Israel and the MKO terror group, basing its analyses on Tehran’s nuclear program on “deceptive information” provided by the pair.
“Based on its Statute, the Agency should encourage, support and help member countries achieve peaceful nuclear energy, but unfortunately, for a variety of reasons and because they consider superiority as exclusive to themselves, they have monopolized science and technology, restricted us and increased our costs,” he said.
“The enemies put a lot of pressure on the IAEA. Together with the Zionists, the MKO mercenaries regularly feed the IAEA with deceptive information and always incite the Agency against our country,” he added.