Iran issues nuke warning
Iran is capable of making a nuclear weapon, a senior adviser to the supreme leader boasted yesterday, claiming the government just has not made a decision on whether or not to build one.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic, Kamal Kharrazi explained that ‘‘in a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium . . . Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one’’.
Iran has long said that it is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon and that its everexpansive
capabilities are for civilian use only.
The comments from the senior official come on the back of United States President Joe
Biden’s first trip to the Middle East last week, which from Israel to Saudi Arabia was primarily focused on a collective attempt to thwart threats coming from Iran.
Kharrazi said that Tehran would never negotiate over its missile programme.
Negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are at an impasse and while Biden has made it clear that he will continue to put diplomatic action first, the president warned on the trip that he would use military force against the regime as a ‘‘last resort’’ to stop it acquiring a nuclear weapon.
As the West and its allies in the Middle East try to pressure Iran to cull its nuclear activities, domestically Tehran is facing enormous pressure with growing discontent over severe economic crises, partially as a result of sanctions on the country.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been projecting their power by arresting scores of politicians, artists and civil rights activists in recent days, signalling a fresh wave of repression under a new Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spy chief.
The crackdown comes on the back of the assassinations of some of its top commanders, which have widely been blamed on Israeli infiltrators.
The arrested people include Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister and vocal critic of Ayatollah
Khamenei; six members of the ‘‘Mothers for Justice’’, women who lost their sons in the 2019 nationwide protests, worldrenowned film directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, and Mostafa Aleahmad, a documentary film-maker.
At least 15 people were detained within the first two weeks of July, according to the US-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
Long acting as the power base of the country’s clerical regime, the IRGC saw a major change in its leadership last month when its long-time intelligence chief, Hossein Taeb, was sacked after the assassinations.