Iran Claims UN Nuclear Visit May Resolve ‘Ambiguities’
Iran’s atomic energy chief said Wednesday he expected within days a visit of representatives from the United Nations nuclear monitoring body.
Iran’s atomic energy chief said Wednesday he expected within days a visit of representatives from the United Nations nuclear monitoring body.
“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.”
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.