Iran Says High-Level Uranium Enrichment Going Steady
Despite reports of Iran slowing buildup of uranium needed for weapons, the regime’s nuclear chief says enrichment is going on in accordance with the law.
Despite reports of Iran slowing buildup of uranium needed for weapons, the regime’s nuclear chief says enrichment is going on in accordance with the law.
Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was referring to the bill passed by the parliament, dominated by hardliners, in December 2020, dubbed the “Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Protect Iranian Nation's Interest.”
Eslami made the remarks during an event to unveil domestically-produced Cesium-137 radionuclide, announced as a “nuclear achievement” by the state media. The radioactive isotope of cesium is formed by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. The product easily becomes volatile when released suddenly at high temperature, as in the case of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and with atomic explosions, and can travel very long distances in the air.
During a press conference on the sidelines of the event, Eslami was asked about reports regarding Tehran slowing down its 60% enrichment. "Our nuclear enrichment continues based on the strategic framework law," he replied, adding that “Our enemies were and are against Iran’s nuclear industry, but they all should know that the nuclear industry is a strategic industry."
The bill obligated the government to step up Iran’s nuclear program and enrich uranium beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear agreement, an effort aimed at forcing the United States to lift economic sanctions imposed in 2018, when former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA. The bill also mandated restrictions on monitoring by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), adding to the complicated dynamics of renewing the JCPOA.
The bill’s stipulation about higher levels of uranium enrichment was not an empty negotiating tactic. Iran actually began enrichment at 20 percent in early 2021, breaking the JCPOA limit of 3.65 percent. Subsequently, enrichment was increased to 60 percent during talks with West to revive the JCPOA.
Tehran now has enough fissile material for at least two nuclear bombs, and it also gradually restricted IAEA monitoring access to its nuclear facilities, introducing another complicating factor into the JCPOA talks.
Earlier in August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had significantly slowed the pace at which it was accumulating near-weapons-grade enriched uranium and diluted some of its stockpile, moves that could help ease tensions with the US and revive broader talks over Iran's nuclear program.
The report came a day after Iran released four US citizens from prison into house arrest with another American already there, the first step in a planned prisoner swap that Washington expects will eventually see them return home. Iran will gain access to six billion dollars of oil revenues trapped in South Korea under US sanctions, If the US detainees are set free. The US agreed to the release of another $3 billion held in Iraq.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Eslami said that Iran has maintained interactions with the IAEA, claiming that issues regarding four Iranian nuclear sites have been reduced to two. He added that a deputy of IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi is set to visit Iran in the near future.
Iranian lawmakers are divided over cooperation with the IAEA, with some against any cooperation. After the UN nuclear watchdog signaled its unhappiness with what it said was slow progress in its dealings with Iran, lawmakers pointed out that parts of a recent agreement with the IAEA are contrary to the "strategic action."
In June, Iran said it reinstalled 10 cameras of the UN nuclear watchdog in one of its installations that were removed last year when the UN watchdog’s board of governors in June 2022 censured Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the agency. Lawmaker Ali Khezrian said that re-installing IAEA monitoring systems at Esfahan (Isfahan) nuclear site was beyond the Safeguards Agreement and based on the additional protocol to the IAEA-Iran agreement, which cover basic requirements of cooperation with the IAEA under the NPT.
The secretive unwritten deal between Washington and Tehran appears to have several dimensions not disclosed yet with reports claiming that Iran has also restrained proxy militias in Iraq and Syria in addition to limiting nuclear activities.
“The prisoner deal is a key step forward for Washington and Tehran’s efforts to lower tensions as they eye a return to formal nuclear negotiations later this year,” the New York Times quoted Henry Rome, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The United States was insisting all along during nuclear talks that Iran’s funds would be released only after a nuclear deal was reached, Bagheri-Kani said during a television interview Thursday evening. However, “Iran’s diplomacy shaped conditions in such a way that the Americans were forced to retreat from their position and free Iran’s funds outside the framework of a [nuclear] agreement.”
Earlier this month, Iran and the United States announced that $6 billion frozen in South Korea due to US sanction will be released through Qatari mediation, as Iran moved five US hostages from prison into home detention. The Iranians insist that the US citizens will be released only as a prisoner exchange deal, and the release of the funds from South Korea is not related to the hostage deal. However, it is clear that the hostages are being kept in Tehran until the money reaches Iranian bank accounts in Qatar. Currently, the funds are with the Swiss central bank, which is exchanging them into euros gradually and will transfer to Qatar.
Bagheri-Kani confirmed that talks over the hostages were taking place alongside nuclear negotiations in 2021-2022, but the process ended when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and the delegations left Vienna after almost a year of periodic meetings.
He added that Iran continued pursuing the issue of the blocked funds through intermediaries and the US was resisting. In September 2022, however, “Americans accepted to take steps for releasing the money outside the framework of the nuclear talks, after our persistent follow-ups.”
This coincides with the start of nationwide antiregime protests in Iran immediately after the hijab police fatally wounded Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman in mid-September. Once the protests began, the Biden administrations began voicing support for the Iranian people and their human rights. But if we believe the senior Iranian diplomat, this was the time the US administration agreed to discuss the release of the funds.
In early October, the State Department announced that the US was no longer pursuing the revival of the JCPOA.
“Our focus is not an accord that isn’t moving forward, but what is happening in Iran ... this popular movement and the brutal crackdown of the regime against protesters,” US special envoy Rob Malley said in Paris on October 14.“It’s the sale of armed drones by Iran to Russia ... and the liberation of our hostages…”
Two day later, Malley told CNN that "Right now the talks on revival of JCPOA are not on the US agenda; the focus is on what's happening in Iran as the talks are stalled," adding that “Iran has taken a position in those talks for the past two months, which is simply inconsistent with a return to the deal.” The same message was reiterated several times by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top officials.
Iranian protesters and their supporters in the US, Europe and elsewhere took these remarks as indication that the Biden administration had given up dealing with Tehran, while Bagheri-Kani’s remarks indicate behind the scenes talks were taking place for the release of the funds.
Bagheri-Kani said in his interview that the protests in Iran briefly “distracted” the Biden administration, “but they quickly returned to the talks at the end of autumn.”
Critics see the hostage deal as a dangerous step by the US, which will embolden Tehran to detain more Americans given the chance and the money can empower it to undertake anti-West actions.
Moreover, media reports have hinted that the administration has in fact reached a wider, unwritten deal with Tehran, because around $3 billion was also released from Iraq. Supposedly, Iran has agreed to marginally slow down its uranium enrichment in exchange for the funds and a US willingness not to actively enforce existing sanctions.
The Kingdom’s bid to reach parity with Iran, in spite of revived diplomatic relations this year, is driving the Persian Gulf’s oil powerhouse to reach out to China, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Saudi Arabia has asked the US to help it develop a civilian nuclear program as part of a potential deal that would include diplomatic normalization with Israel, which Riyadh doesn’t recognize. Saudi Arabia is also asking the US to provide security guarantees for the kingdom as part of such a deal.
It is causing dilemmas for the United States, which is walking a tightrope in the region, with continuing tensions with Iran and an ever-hungrier Saudi Arabia seeking uranium enrichment on its home soil.
Bypassing the US in favor of China, which earlier this year was a major part of the negotiations to reinstate diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi, is a firm statement that with or without President Joe Biden’s agreement, Riyadh will do all it can to forge its way into the nuclear domain.
According to Israel’s Haaretz, leading American and Israeli experts are warning the Biden administration not to accept Saudi demands for uranium enrichment as part of a future US-Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement, for fear it will build its own nuclear weapons.
The fears emerged after Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer did not rule out Saudi uranium enrichment during an interview with PBS. He argued the Saudis could go to China or France to set up a native nuclear enrichment program, suggesting it would be better to have the US, Israel’s most important ally, involved.
A Saudi-Israel deal, alongside the shadow war with Iran, is atop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda, and many in Israel fear he will reach it at any cost as he approaches the end of his decades-long political career.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said this week: “It is clear to everyone that if they [Saudi] start enriching uranium in the Middle East, everyone will want to."
Until now, the US has said American nuclear aid is contingent on the Saudis agreeing to not enrich their own uranium or mine their own uranium deposits in the kingdom—non-proliferation conditions not sought by China, which has been seeking to strengthen its influence in the Middle East.
China National Nuclear Corp., a state-owned company known as CNNC, has bid to build a nuclear plant in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, near the border with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, according to the WSJ, which claims the dealings with China are a pressure tactic on Washington as the two nations drifted further apart since the Biden administration came to power.
Biden promised to make Saudi a ‘pariah state’ after the brutal assassination of US-Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which has caused years of tension between Biden and Saudi’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has made obtaining nuclear power a priority. After a decade of discussions, the Saudis are now impatiently pushing to award a contract for the Eastern Province plant, known as Duwaiheen—a two-reactor, 2.8-gigawatt facility—by the end of 2023 and eventually construct 16 reactors at a cost of some $80 billion to $100 billion.
Driven by the desire for parity with Iran in addition to looking towards a time when the kingdom’s main export, oil, is no longer a viable revenue source and nuclear power would offer a viable alternative, time is now ticking. MBS has made no secret of his willingness to develop nuclear weapons if Iran does.
China has already helped Riyadh build its own ballistic missiles and helped the Saudis with a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore, an initial step toward enriching uranium.
There is no doubt that Saudi Crown Prince has his eye on being the region’s political powerhouse, a fact which has more recently created tensions with the UAE’s President and MBS’s initial mentor on his rise to power, Mohammed Bin Zayed.
Close allies of the US such as the UAE and South Korea have accepted stronger restrictions on their nuclear programs and will see US support for enrichment on Saudi soil as a justification to demand the same.
Where the Israeli factor plays into the next stages of the race to nuclear is yet to be seen, the Prime Minister’s office claiming hours after Dermer’s comments that it will not allow any of its neighbors to develop nuclear weapons, but there seems no doubt that Saudi Arabia will get its way, whatever the cost.