Iran has the technical capability of making a nuclear weapon however, it hasn’t decided if to make one, a top adviser for Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei stated to that Qatar’s al Jazeera TV on Sunday.
Kamal Kharrazi spoke a day after US President Joe Biden ended his four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, vowing to stop Iran from “acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons”.
Kharrazi’s remarks were the first time that it was suggested that Iran might be interested in nuclear weapons. This is something Iran has always denied.
“In just a few days, we could enrich uranium by up to 60%, and we are able to produce 90 percent enriched uranium … Iran has the technological capability to create the nuclear bomb, however there isn’t been a decision from Iran to construct an actual bomb,” Kharrazi told.
Iran is currently enriching its nuclear arsenal 60 percent or more over a limit of 3.67pc under the 2015 nuclear agreement that it signed with the world’s major powers. Uranium that is 90 percent enriched can be used to make an nuclear bomb.
In the year 2018, the former US president Donald Trump ditched the nuclear agreement, which stipulated that Iran reduced its work on enriching uranium and could be a path towards nuclear weapons, in exchange to a reduction in economic sanctions.
In response to Washington’s withdrawal and reimposition of severe sanctions Tehran began to violate the Pact’s nuclear restrictions.
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The Iranian intelligence minister warned that Western pressure could force Tehran to develop nuclear weapons, a development of which Khamenei had banned through a fatwa or religious decree in the early 2000s.
Iran claims it refines Uranium for purposes of energy for civilians and has claimed that its violations of the international agreement can be reversed in the event that they are corrected by the United States lifts sanctions and joins the accord.
The basic outline of a new deal was agreed upon in March, after 11 months of indirect negotiations with Tehran with Biden’s office in Vienna.
However, talks broke down on the basis of obstacles, which included Tehran’s demands that Washington must provide guarantees that there will be no US president will break the agreement, in similar to what Trump did.
Biden is unable to guarantee this, as the nuclear agreement is a non-binding agreement on a political basis but not a legally binding agreement.
“The United States has not offered any guarantees for the preservation of the nuclear agreement, and this could undermine any deal,” Kharrazi said.
Israel that Iran does not recognize and has threatened to strike Iranian nuclear facilities If diplomacy isn’t able to stop Iran’s nuclear plans.
Kharrazi claimed that Iran will never discuss its ballistic missile program and regional policy, as is demanded from the West along with its allies within the Middle East.
“Any attack on our security by countries that are in our vicinity are met with a a direct response from these countries and Israel.”
