IRAN WOULD stop enriching uranium to a high grade if it was assured of the supplies it needed for a research reactor, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on the eve of the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power plant.
His remarks came as the US reportedly told Israel it believes Iran is still a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon – probably lessening the chances of a pre-emptive military strike that could ignite war across the Middle East.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s comments to a Japanese newspaper appeared designed to deflect international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme.
“We promise to stop enriching uranium to 20 per cent purity if we are ensured fuel supply,” he was quoted as saying by the Yomiuri Shimbun yesterday. But he rejected calls by the UN security council for Iran to halt all enrichment.
“We have a right to enrich uranium. We have never initiated war or wanted nuclear bombs.”
Earlier this week, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned his country would not engage in nuclear talks with the US unless sanctions were lifted and military threats ended.
Israel, an undeclared atomic power which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has often warned that it cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran and hinted it may attack it, as it did Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.
The US has forcefully backed tougher sanctions and there have been signs that Iran has experienced technical problems with its nuclear programme, either because of the difficulties in obtaining parts or as a result of deliberate sabotage.
The New York Timesquoted Israeli officials as saying their assessments were coming into line with the US view, but they remain suspicious that Iran has a secret enrichment site yet to be discovered. Fierce debate has been raging in the US media about this in recent weeks.
US officials told the paper they believed the mounting cost of sanctions – especially those affecting Iran’s ability to import petrol and develop its oil fields – had created fissures with the country’s political elite and has forced a debate about the costs of developing nuclear weapons. British officials also point to divisions in Tehran about the risks of proceeding.
“The argument is over how far to push the programme, how close to a weapon they can get without paying an even higher price,” said a senior US official.
This year, Iran has added only a few centrifuges, the machines that spin uranium to enrich it, to its main plant at Natanz.
Only about half of those installed are operating, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
So far, Iran has produced enough, with considerable additional enrichment, for about two nuclear weapons.
Iran will mark a significant advance tomorrow when it inaugurates the Bushehr nuclear power station. The plant poses little proliferation risk since Russia is supplying the enriched uranium for the reactor and will take away spent fuel that could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium.
The US, Britain and other western countries all insist Iran has the right to generate nuclear energy under the non-proliferation treaty and hope to use that to coax it away from any non-peaceful work. – (Guardian service)