TEHRAN: Iran’s nuclear chief on Monday said UN criticism pushed his country to retaliate by announcing ambitious plans for more uranium enrichment. With tensions rising over deadlocked negotiations, France said diplomacy was not working and sanctions against Iran were needed.
Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi told state radio that Iran’s decision to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities was necessary to respond to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s resolution on Friday demanding that Iran halt all enrichment activities.
The bold announcement appears to be largely bluster: Any new plants would take years to build and stock with centrifuges, if Iran can even afford it or obtain the materials while under UN sanctions. But the ambitious plans demonstrates Tehran’s anger over the IAEA rebuke and its refusal to back down in the standoff despite sanctions threats.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Iran’s decision on the new nuclear sites “a bit childish.”
“Iran is playing an extremely dangerous game,” Kouchner said on France’s RTL radio Monday. “There’s no coherence in all this, other than a gut reaction.”
Iran and the top powers at the UN are deadlocked over a UN-drafted proposal for Iran to send much of its enriched uranium abroad, which the West seeks because it would at least temporarily leave Tehran unable to develop a nuclear bomb. So far Iran has balked at the offer. The unusually strong IAEA censure of Iran over enrichment was a sign of the West’s growing impatience with its defiance.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said that after Iran’s enrichment announcement on Sunday the international community should “probably commit toward new economic sanctions against Iran.”
“It’s clear for weeks that the extended hand of Barack Obama and the extended hand of the international community, in an approach of transparency ... are not working,” Morin told France-Inter radio on Monday.
But Russia’s energy minister, on a visit to Iran on Monday, maintained there was still a good chance for negotiations to resolve the crisis.
Sergei Shmatko urged Iran to continue cooperating with the IAEA and talking with the US and its allies.
“We are not interested in the deterioration of the situation at all,” he said. “There are good capacities for the continuation of talks.” The sharply worded IAEA resolution on Friday repeated demands Iran halt all enrichment and stop construction on a newly discovered enrichment facility that has been under construction for years at Fordo, near the Iranian city of Qom.
Iran has one operating enrichment facility, at the central town of Natanz, which has so far produced around 1,500 kg of low-enriched uranium over the past years. That is more than enough to produce a warhead if Iran decided to enrich it to a higher level.
On Sunday, the Iranian Cabinet ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building new enrichment facilities at five sites that have already been studied and propose five other locations for future construction within two months. The new sites are to be on the same scale as Natanz.
Salehi, who is also the head of Iran’s nuclear program, said the IAEA resolution backed by six world powers left no option for Iran but to give a firm response.
“We had no intention of building many facilities like the Natanz site, but apparently the West doesn’t want to understand Iran’s peaceful message,” Salehi said.
Iran aims to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. Iranian officials say the new enrichment facilities are needed to produce enough fuel for its future nuclear power plants — though the country currently does not have a single operating power reactor.
The UN-brokered plan at the focus of Western diplomatic efforts aims to reduce tensions by requiring Iran to send 1,100 kg of low-enriched uranium — around 70 percent of its stockpile — to Russia in one batch by the end of the year. That would leave Iran without enough material to further enrich for a warhead.
In return, Russia and France would further process the low-enriched uranium into fuel rods to be returned to Iran for use in a medical research reactor in Tehran.
