Iran Denies Uranium Enrichment to 84 Percent Purity Level Amid IAEA Row

Mon Feb 20 2023
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Monitoring Desk

ISLAMABAD/TEHRAN: Iran has denied it has enriched uranium to a purity of 84 per cent amid ongoing issues with the international nuclear watchdog and disagreements over its 2015 nuclear deal.

On Sunday, US-based financial news agency Bloomberg reported that inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found uranium enriched to a purity of 84 percent, just below the 90 percent required for a bomb, and are trying to determine if it was produced intentionally.

That is the highest purity uranium ever found in Iran, which gradually boosted its enrichment since 2019, one year after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States (US) from its nuclear deal with world powers and has declared enrichment up to 60%. Iranian officials have said they are not seeking nuclear arms.

“The IAEA is aware of media reports relating to uranium enrichment levels in Iran,” the agency wrote on Twitter early on Monday. “Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi is discussing the results of recent agency verification activities with Tehran and will inform the IAEA Board of Governors as appropriate.”

Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Tehran, told the state-linked Fars news website late on Sunday that particles with a purity of higher than 60% had been found by inspectors, but that had happened before and was nothing out of the ordinary.

60 percent enrichment process 

He said, “The existence of a uranium particle and particles with a purity of over 60% in the enrichment process did not mean that there had been enrichment over 60 percent,”.

“That is something very natural which can even occur as a result of a reduction in the feed of centrifuge cascades at the moment. What issue is the final product, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has not tried to enrich over 60% so far.”

According to Kamalvandi, a problem like this wasn’t something the agency would report to its member states; the fact that it leaked to Western media showed it was an effort towards “smearing and warping facts”.

The spokesperson repeated Iranian accusations that the agency was being used as a “political tool” to pressure Iran with confidential reports previously leaked to media in Western countries.

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