Iran's Nuclear Chief Says Uranium Enrichment 'More Than Doubled'

“We hope the visit of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials to Tehran in the coming days can help resolve issues with the agency,” Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Agency Organization told state television.

Tehran and the IAEA have been increasingly at odds since earlier this year over uranium traces found by the IAEA in 2021 at three sites in Iran not declared as nuclear-related. Iran has argued IAEA questioning over the issue came only after allegations by Israel in 2018 and should be shelved as part of efforts to revive the Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

“Our interactions with the agency are ongoing and we hope that a step forward will be taken in order to remove the obstacles and ambiguities with the agency,” Eslami said. There was no immediate confirmation from the IAEA over a visit, which would be addition to the agency’s on-going, albeit reduced, activity in Iran.

In November, Iran seemed to have canceled a similar IAEA trip reported to planned by the agency’s director Rafael Mariano Grossi. Eslami said at the time that “no meeting was scheduled.

In remarks to Hamshahri newspaper last week Iran’s nuclear chief said the uranium traces had been discovered at a farm, an abandoned mine and a landfill, and in the last had been found in imported waste. “This does not mean the place of discovery was a nuclear site or that it was an undeclared nuclear activity,” Eslami said.

Iran’s failure to satisfy the IAEA over the traces, which apparently relate to work carried out before 2003, has led the 35-member IAEA board to twice vote through censure motions, in June and November.

In the meantime, popular anti-regime protests in Iran and the government’s deadly use of violence have led to strong Western criticism of Tehran. This came after the JCPOA talks reached an impasse in August, and Western powers have said they are not focused on the nuclear talks at this point.

The protests and increasing international isolation, coupled with a deteriorating economic situation have put renewed pressures on Tehran.

Grossi: ‘An obligation, as simple as that’

In an interview this week with al-Jazeera television, Grossi, the IAEA director-general, insisted that it was “an obligation, as simple as that,” for Iran to satisfy the agency over the uranium traces, regardless of what “political decision-makers” might agree over the JCPOA.

Grossi said that Iran’s nuclear program needed to be assessed overall. “They are moving fast to increase…the enrichment capacity and the accumulation of enriched uranium,” he explained. The IAEA director-general highlighted Iran’s enrichment to 60 percent (as opposed to a 3.67 percent JCPOA cap), its use of more advanced centrifuges barred by the JCPOA, and its stockpiling enriched uranium, including 60-percent-enriched uranium, of which Iran has over 62kg and which is close to 90 percent ‘weapons grade.’

The JCPOA “allowed 5,000 centrifuges, of an older generation, the so-called IR-1s, which were slower,” Grossi said. “Now we are moving into IR-2, IR-4s, IR-6s…thousands of centrifuges…20-22,000 … far above what had been agreed before.”

But Grossi said the technology used was not the “indication of intentions.” Iran had a “right to enrich uranium,” he argued, but also a “responsibility to give assurances, that everything…is clear and there is no diversion [for non-peaceful purposes] …We have to sit down and talk to each other… Nobody is saying that they are making nuclear weapons, but at the same time…the constant accumulation of material at those very high levels requires a very intensive presence of IAEA inspectors. There is a need for transparency.”

Both at the UN Human Rights Council November 24, and in an interview this week with Iran International, United Nations special rapporteur Javaid Rehman had said he sought prosecutions over human rights violations in Iran under principles of universal jurisdiction either in national courts or outside Iran in international courts.

Asked by Iran International reporter Samira Gharaei Tuesday, Price explained steps the US would take over human rights in Iran. Washington, he said, would move a resolution December 14 to expel Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women and would continue “imposing costs on those responsible for the brutal crackdown… through multiple rounds of sanctions.” Price linked this to the UN investigation, which showed the “world is watching.”

Price also warned Iran over issuing death sentences for protesters. “Unfortunately, this is just really the latest tactic that we’ve seen from the Iranian regime…[against] individuals who are exercising their universal rights. These sentences, we know, are meant to intimidate people, to suppress dissent. They are – they simply underscore Iran’s leadership’s fears of its own people and the fact that Iran’s government fears the truth,” stated Price.

Asked if the United States would support a demand by protesters for “regime change” Price replied, “We support the ability of the Iranian people to exercise their rights, to demand what it is that they seek. These are questions that are up to the Iranian people.”

Asked about returning Iran’s nuclear program to the restrictions of the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), Price repeated that “talks are not on the agenda right now” as the US “focused on…ways to support the protestors across Iran.”

Diplomacy, arming ‘partners’

Nonetheless, diplomacy was the best way to ensure “Iran will be permanently and verifiably barred once again from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Price said. This had been the case, he noted, before the administration of President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew the US from the JCPOA and imposed draconian sanctions against Iran, prompting Tehran by 2019 to begin exceeding the JCPOA nuclear limits.

Price said that Tehran would gain no leverage in talks by further expanding the nuclear program or by not satisfying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “safeguards investigation,” a reference to the agency’s probe into uranium traces found at ‘non-nuclear’ sites.

Such actions would, the spokesman said, lead rather to “additional costs” on Iran. Price noted that the US had “worked very closely with partners in the region, partners beyond, regarding the challenge that’s presented by Iran’s nuclear program.”

Speaking to Iran International correspondent Arash Aalaei, US Republican Party Senator Josh Hawley, a close ally of Trump, said the Biden administration had made a mistake by negotiating with Iran and treating it as “a legitimate state.” Hawley called for “arming…partners and allies in the region…” This, he said, would “send the message of support to Iranian protesters and the folks who’re trying to stand up for some sense of liberty there.”

The Trump administration agreed over $400 billion in arms sales over ten years to Saudi Arabia, which is expected this week to sign weapons deals worth $30 billion with a Chinese delegation led by President Xi Jinping. Riyadh has already deployed Chinese ballistic missiles.

After a statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US intends to continue nuclear talks with Iran, the Republican Senator said, “The Biden admin made a mistake by saying we'll get back to negotiation with Iran and will treat you as a legitimate state. They're not, and we should make that clear.”

After popular nationwide protests broke out in Iran in mid-September, the Biden administration has repeatedly said that Washington’s focus is on solidarity with the protesters and not the nuclear talks that came to an impasse in August.

But the administration has not announced a formal end to the talks and Blinken recently reiterated that the US is still counting on diplomacy with Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear accord known as JCPOA.

“The US should be doing nothing to lend aid to the Iranian regime, and we should be doing all we can to express our solidarity with protesters and saying to the world that the US is not going to help this regime get stronger,” Hawley said.

He added that the intentions of the Iranian regime’s “interests and ambitions in that region are malign, and we ought to be saying that. One of the clearest ways to say that would be to say we're not going to negotiate with them.”

US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said Saturday that “Iran is not interested in a deal and we’re focused on other things,” and added “Right now we can make a difference in trying to deter and disrupt the provision of weapons to Russia and trying to support the fundamental aspirations of the Iranian people.”

Iran began supplying military drones to Russia that were used against civilian infrastructure in parallel with Russian missiles that brought destruction to the country’s energy network at the onset of winter.

There has been talk of Iran supplying missiles and other weapons to its northern ally, while nuclear talks with the West that lasted 18 months came to an impasse in early September.

The Biden Administration in the talks tried to revive the JCPOA, abandoned by former President Donald Trump in 2018, but the diplomatic effort so far has proven futile as Iran kept shifting its position in the negotiations. Tehran in the meantime is ramping up its uranium enrichment.

“What’s the point?” Malley said about the talks. “Why should we focus on it if Iran comes back with demands that are unacceptable? At this point we’re not going to focus on the nuclear deal because we can’t sort of keep going back and then being played.”

Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran (AEOI) and a vice-president, told journalists the project, known also as the ‘Kanun’ plant due to its proximity to the river, was “important and necessary” for the south west of Iran. He said work was beginning with preparing the site for construction of a 300-megawatt (MW) plant.

Plans for Darkhovin go back to days before the 1979 Revolution, when Shah Reza Pahlavi agreed with France the construction of two 910-MW reactors on the site. In 1992 then president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on a visit to Beijing agreed a plan with China, against United States objections, to sell two 300-MW reactors for Darkhovin, but the Chinese subsequently withdrew, apparently due to continuing pressure from Washington.

Iran did sign up Zurich-based ABB as a consultant, but the Swiss-Swedish robotics and power multinational withdrew more than once before finally quitting in 2018 as the US introduced ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions threatening punitive action against any entity having banking dealings with Iran.

Eslami, making an oblique reference to the apparent failings of “foreigners,” said Saturday Iran would itself construct the $2-billion plant, using a pressurized water reactor (PWR), over eight years on 59 hectares, as part of a wider plan to build “local” plants to power Iran’s industries.

It is not clear if Iran has the technology to independently complete a nuclear reactor. It took Russia decades to finish the Bushehr reactor and Iran was completely dependent on Moscow.

The $2 billion price tag might also be too high and not make sense in comparison to building green renewable sources. For example, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious green energy projects are expected to cost a total of $10 billion with both solar and wind power by 2026 that can provide 50 percent of its electricity needs.

The 300 megawatt that the $2 billion project promises to provide is a tiny contribution to Iran’s ever-increasing consumption of nearly 70,000 megawatts.

The reactor itself has been billed as the country’s first one to be indigenously designed and built. In line with the stress on ‘self-reliance’ beloved of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the AEOI chief stressed the role of Iranian companies in manufacturing the plant’s equipment, including cooling pumps.

Russia has long been in talks with Tehran over new units for Iran’s sole nuclear power station at Bushehr, southern Iran, which began operating in 2011 but has had a checkered performance, producing only 1.25 percent of the country’s electricity in 2021-22. Iran’s stated aim is to produce 10,000 MW of electricity from atomic plants, which if attained would be around a third of the current output today from nuclear power in Japan and roughly equivalent to that of the United Kingdom.

While PWRs are the most common nuclear power plants across the world, any atomic work by Iran is deemed suspicious by the United States, which has twice this year sponsored resolutions critical of Iran at the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations agency tasked with verifying the peaceful nature of nuclear programs.