U.S. Slams Iran over Uranium Enrichment Plans
The United States on Thursday slammed Iran over its plans to triple its uranium enrichment capacity in defiance of multiple U.N. sanctions.
The move was "the most recent brazen example of (Iran's) deepening non-compliance" with its international obligations, U.S. envoy Glyn Davies told the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency at a meeting here.
The day before, Iran's nuclear chief Fereydoun Abbasi Davani had announced that the Islamic republic would expand its production of 20-percent enriched uranium and move the work from its main enrichment plant in Natanz to a smaller site at Fordo.
Iran has long been producing low or 3.5-percent enriched uranium (LEU) at Natanz, but started producing uranium at the higher level of purity of 20 percent in February 2010, ostensibly to make the fuel for a medical research reactor.
The U.N. Security Council in New York has repeatedly ordered Tehran to halt all uranium enrichment until the IAEA had verified the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities
.
Uranium enrichment is the most sensitive part of the program because it can be used to produce both the fuel for a nuclear reactor and the fissile material for an atomic warhead.
The West accuses Tehran of seeking to build a bomb under the guise of a civilian power program, a charge which Iran strongly denies.
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, insisted that his country had no choice but to produce the nuclear fuel itself, because negotiations over a supply deal with the United States, France and Russia had not come to fruition and enriched uranium was not commercially available to Iran via the markets.
"We are in need of nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor" which makes radioisotopes for medical research and the treatment of cancer, Soltanieh said.
"Hundreds of patients are struggling with cancer (and) need radioisotopes. And if we can't get the fuel from supplier countries then we have to accelerate to produce the required fuel" ourselves, he told reporters on the sidelines of the IAEA board meeting.
In his address to the closed-door assembly, U.S. ambassador Davies noted that the expansion of the enrichment capacity meant Iran would be producing more 20-percent enriched uranium than it needs for its one and only research reactor.
Furthermore, "it also represents yet another chapter in the changing Iranian narrative regarding why this underground facility was built," Davies said.
The Fordo plant was built secretly deep inside a mountain near the Shiite shrine city of Qom some 150 kilometers southwest of Tehran.
Revelations in 2009 about its construction infuriated the West and prompted the United Nations to strengthen sanctions against Tehran.
Sources close to the IAEA said that Iran has yet not officially notified the U.N. watchdog about its plans to expand uranium enrichment, as it is obliged to do under its safeguards agreement, and that the agency had only learned about the plans via the media.
Speaking to reporters, Iranian envoy Soltanieh said "we will inform the IAEA for sure officially and the IAEA will be fully controlling the activities in this respect."
But he provided no specific timetable.
Source: Agence France Presse
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