Hasan Rowhani, Iran’s senior nuclear official, insisted that two nuclear installations singled out for concern by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week were “legal”.
Criticism of Iran from within the IAEA had prompted officials to reconsider an earlier decision to suspend enrichment, he said. This is the process of purifying uranium for use in nuclear power plants or, ultimately, to make bombs.
“Iran will reconsider its decision about suspension and will do some uranium activity in the coming days,” Rowhani said. “Whether we are going to resume enrichment — meaning injecting gas into centrifuges — we haven’t decided yet.
“Perhaps we will continue suspension of injecting gas into centrifuges for some time, but we will end suspension of some other measures.”
Iran is building a heavy water reactor in a plant at Arak. Another plant at Isfahan, which is already running, is capable of processing uranium into gas. While officials in Tehran say their ambitions are confined to generating power, America claims that the country is rich in oil and gas and says the programme is a front for building weapons.
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Any resumption of uranium enrichment would provoke a crisis. Iran, which has been under investigation by the IAEA since August 2002, agreed in a deal with European leaders to stop this in exchange for help with nuclear energy technology. Rowhani said Tehran no longer felt committed to the agreement because the Europeans had not fulfilled their promises.
On Friday the IAEA rebuked Iran for failing to co-operate fully with its inspectors. Diplomats said that United Nations investigators were investigating the possibility that Tehran was hiding an atomic site.