VIENNA: The biggest hurdle Iran and world powers must overcome to clinch a lasting deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme by a July deadline is agreeing on the future scope of uranium enrichment in the Islamic Republic, officials and diplomats said yesterday.
An Iranian official said it will be “very difficult though not impossible” to bridge the divide. Western officials said Iran and the six powers must agree not only on the number and type of centrifuge machines Iran will operate but also the level of enrichment and size of uranium stocks Tehran can accumulate.
As a result, diplomats said that enrichment has emerged as the principal sticking point in negotiations on what US officials say must be a comprehensive agreement covering every issue under discussion if it is to be acceptable to Washington.
Iran has defied a UN Security Council ban on uranium enrichment and other sensitive nuclear activities, resulting in crippling US, UN and European Union sanctions. It denies allegations from Western powers and their allies that it is covertly seeking the capability to produce atomic weapons.
Some issues have been satisfactorily resolved, though US officials caution that an agreement will not be possible until every detail is resolved. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” a senior US official told reporters this week.
“We need at least 100,000 IR-1 (first generation) centrifuges to produce enough fuel for each of our (civilian) nuclear (power) plants. We have informed the International Atomic Energy Agency about our plans to build 20 plants,” a senior Iranian official said on condition of anonymity.
US officials, however, have made clear for months that the number of centrifuges they are willing to tolerate operating in Iran over the medium term is in the low thousands to ensure that Tehran’s ability to produce a usable amount of bomb-grade uranium, should it go down that road, is severely limited.
REUTERS
