IAEA says Iran has made drastic cuts in its stock of highly enriched uranium

Iran slashes nuclear stock, says UN http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=968784 April 18, 2014 Iran has cut its stock of highly-enriched uranium by 75 per cent, a new report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog has revealed.

The monthly update by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed Tehran remained in compliance with a November interim deal made with world powers, drawn up as part of efforts to find a lasting solution to Iran’s controversial nuclear drive.

Under the agreement, Iran pledged to ‘dilute’ half of its highly-enriched uranium by mid-April, with the rest to be converted by mid-July.

The IAEA report also said that progress on a plant in Tehran that will be used for the conversion of low-enriched uranium had been delayed, but that Iran had said this will not prevent it from fulfilling its part of the deal by the July 20 deadline.

Diplomats who saw the document told AFP everything was in order.

The international community was ‘keeping an eye’ on progress at the conversion plant in Tehran, one of the diplomats added.

Under the November deal, Iran agreed to freeze parts of its nuclear activities, including limiting enrichment. Enriching uranium can be part of a peaceful atomic drive but can also produce weapons-grade material for a bomb.

Tehran has consistently said its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, while the West believes it has a military dimension.

Iran and six world powers – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — will next meet on May 13 in a bid to draw up a lasting accord and end the decade-old standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

April 18, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, Uranium

1 Comment »

Iran’s efforts to loosen the stranglehold of economic sanctions includes doing whatever it takes while still preserving the infrastructure of its nuclear weapons capability. The reduction in enriched fuel is meaningless without a concurrent reduction in the number of centrifuges it operates or the use of a heavy water reactor to produce more fissionable material from unmonitored unenriched uranium fuel. In fact, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi recently said the rogue state would need an additional 30,000 centrifuges of a newer, more efficient model that were originally banned under an agreement Iran signed on to with six Western nations only last year. If Iran can walk away from an agreement it signed just last year, why does anyone think they would be any more compliant with any future agreements? Iran simply wants access to restricted oil monies that it can use to fund its support of Assad in Syria, the terror group Hezbollah, fellow Shiites in Iraq and for future nuclear development.

Comment by Ajax Lessome | April 19, 2014 | Reply

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