N-TALKS IN VIENNA AS TEHRAN EXPANDS ENRICHMENT Iran open on prospects for N-bomb
Tehran ready to build atomic weapon at will
DUBAI, Aug 4, (AP): Iranian officials now speak openly about something long denied by Tehran as it enriches uranium at its closest-ever levels to weapons-grade material: The Islamic Republic is ready to build an atomic weapon at will.
The remarks could be bluster to force more bargaining-table concessions from the U.S. without planning to seek the bomb. Or, as analysts warn, Iran could reach a point like North Korea did some 20 years ago where it decides having the ultimate weapon outweighs any further international sanctions.
Meanwhile, negotiators from Iran, the U.S. and the European Union resumed monthslong, indirect talks over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal Thursday, as international inspectors reported that the Islamic Republic is expanding its uranium enrichment.
The resumption of the Vienna talks, suddenly called Wednesday, appeared not to include high-level representation from all the countries that were part of Iran’s 2015 deal with world powers. The negotiations come as Western officials express growing skepticism over the prospects for a deal to restore the accord. The EU’s top diplomat has warned that “the space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted.”
Iran’s top negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, met with EU mediator Enrique Mora, Iranian media reported. As in other talks, the U.S. won’t directly negotiate with Iran. Instead, the two sides will speak through Mora.
U.S. Special Representative for Iran Rob Malley also was on hand, tweeting Wednesday that “our expectations are in check.”
Mora also met Thursday with Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov, who has represented Moscow’s interests in the talks. Ulyanov also separately met with Bagheri Kani.
“As always we had a frank, pragmatic and constructive exchange of views on ways and means of overcoming the last outstanding issues,” Ulyanov wrote on Twitter.
Stance
But going into the negotiations, Iran laid out a maximalist stance. Through its state-run IRNA news agency, Tehran denied that it had abandoned its effort to get America to delist its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization as a precondition to a deal. That has been a main sticking point.
IRNA also quoted Iran’s civilian nuclear chief as saying turned-off surveillance cameras of the International Atomic Energy Agency would be switched back on only if the West abandons an effort to investigate manmade traces of uranium found at previously undisclosed sites in the country.
Those positions could doom the talks.
Hyperbole aside, the language taken as a whole marks a distinct verbal escalation from Tehran.
“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,” Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Al Jazeera in mid-July. Uranium enriched at 90% is considered weapons-grade.
Ataollah Mohajerani, a culture minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami, then wrote in Iran’s Etemad daily newspaper that Kharrazi’s announcement that Iran could make a nuclear weapon provided a “moral lesson” for Israel and President Joe Biden.
And finally Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear agency, made his own reported comment about a potential military aspect to Iran’s program.
“As Mr. Kharrazi mentioned, Iran has the technical ability to make an atomic bomb, but there is no such plan on the agenda,” Eslami said Monday, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
Sign
Eslami’s agency later said he had been “misunderstood and misjudged” - likely a sign Iran’s theocracy didn’t want him to have been so specific. Eslami’s threat also carries more weight than others as he’s directly worked for Iranian defense agencies linked to Iran’s military nuclear program - including one that secretly built uranium-enriching centrifuges with Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan’s help.
But by 2003, Iran had abandoned its military nuclear program, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, America’s European allies and IAEA inspectors. The U.S. had just invaded Iraq, citing later-debunked claims of Saddam Hussein hiding weapons of mass destruction. America already was at war in Afghanistan, another nation neighboring Iran.
Libya under then-dictator Moammar Gadhafi gave up its own nascent military atomic program that relied on the same Pakistani-designed centrifuges that Tehran bought from Khan.
Ultimately, Iran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw it receive economic sanctions relief while it drastically curtailed its program. Under the deal, Tehran could enrich uranium to 3.67%, while maintaining a stockpile of uranium of 300 kilograms (660 pounds) under constant scrutiny of IAEA surveillance cameras and inspectors.