According to the semi-official Fars news agency, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organization, Mohammad Eslami, said on Monday that Iran has the technical ability to make an atomic bomb but has no plans to do so.
Eslami repeated what senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Kamal Kharrazi said in July. Kharrazi’s comments were a rare hint that the Islamic Republic might want nuclear weapons, which is something it has always denied.
“As Mr. Kharrazi said, Iran has the technical know-how to make an atomic bomb, but there are no plans to do so,” Eslami said.
Iran is already enriching uranium to a level of up to 60% fissile purity, which is much higher than the limit of 3.67pc set by the now-broken 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Uranium that has been enriched by 90% can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
In 2018, former US President Donald Trump got rid of the nuclear pact, which limited Iran’s work to enrich uranium, which could lead to nuclear weapons, in exchange for easing international economic sanctions.
The top Iranian nuclear negotiator said on Sunday that Iran has responded to top EU diplomat Josep Borrell’s plan to save the nuclear deal and that it wants negotiations to end quickly.
Borrell said that he had come up with a new draught text to get the deal back on track. “After exchanging messages last week and looking over the proposed texts, we may be able to decide soon on when to start a new round of nuclear talks,” Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said.
After 11 months of indirect talks in Vienna, Iran and the government of US President Joe Biden agreed on the main points of a new deal in March.
But then the talks broke down because of things like Tehran’s request that Washington promises that no other US president will leave the deal as Trump did. Biden can’t say this because the nuclear deal is not a legally binding treaty. Instead, it is a political agreement that doesn’t have to be kept.
Mahnur is MS(development Studies)Student at NUST University, completed BS Hons in Eng Literature. Content Writer, Policy analyst, Climate Change specialist, Teacher, HR Recruiter.
