Nuclear Chief Says Iran Has Boosted Enriched Uranium Stockpile

The talks, which aim to bring Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear pact aimed at curbing the Iranian enrichment program, were adjourned in June after hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iran's president.

Speaking during a visit to Syria on Saturday, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated that Iran would "soon" return to the nuclear talks with world powers, which include indirect negotiations with the United States, Iranian state media reported.

"Of course, we will soon return to the Vienna talks and we are keeping our eyes on the issue of verification and receiving the necessary guarantees for the implementation of commitments by the Western parties," state media quoted Amir-Abdollahian as saying.

He did not give details of the verification and monitoring mechanism Tehran was seeking.

Former president Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the nuclear pact in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that crippled Iran's economy, prompting Tehran to breach some of the accord’s nuclear restrictions.

Report by Reuters

Speaking during a visit to Syria, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated that Iran would "soon" return to the nuclear talks with world powers, which include indirect negotiations with the United States. A main concern of Iran in any talks to rescue the 2015 nuclear deal would be around ways to verify the lifting of US sanctions, he said on Saturday.

Questions also linger if Iran is demanding unfreezing of some of its assets held in different counties. The foreign minister hinted last week that the US should release $10 billion to show goodwill.

In an interview with France 24 television cited by the official news agency IRNA Saturday, the foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh repeated earlier statements that the new administration of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) has carried out dual reviews: one, now concluded, deciding to continue the talks, and a second reviewing details of talks to date.

According to IRNA, Khatibzadeh stressed that Iran would return to the talks more quickly than the three months it took the United States to open talks in April after President Joe Biden took office in January having pledged to return to the agreement, from which his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. But it has been more than three months since the last round of talks in June.

The spokesman criticized the Biden administration for continuing Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions despite campaign promises. "The most important issue is lifting all sanctions imposed on Iran," Khatibzadeh said.

European signatories of the deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – have expressed concern that Iran is in no hurry to resume talks as it is gaining useful experience in running a nuclear program that has expanded since 2019.

Some pundits in Iran also see no rush. "If Iran was delaying the return to the talks to carry out economic reforms that could lessen the impact of sanctions this would be justified," international affairs analyst Hasan Beheshtipour told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) Friday.

But Beheshtipour also suggested that unravelling a complex network of sanctions needed negotiations with world powers, and that Iran should not expect all sanctions lifted overnight. Beheshtipour said that the cost of circumventing sanctions − adding $20 to the $5 production cost of each barrel of oil − justified a focus on oil and financial sanctions.

A conservative foreign policy expert, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh backed Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian's call for the US to ‘unfreeze’ $10 billion of Iran's money as a goodwill gesture.

Falahatpisheh, who headed the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee 2018-19, said that instead of the fruitless "negotiation for the sake of negotiation" under President Hassan Rouhani, Amir-Abdollahian had suggested "a positive step" towards reviving the JCPOA.

Khatibzadeh has denied that Iran has preconditions for resuming talks, although some pundits have interpreted Amir-Abdollahian's demand for unfreezing Iranian assets as a toughening of Tehran’s approach.

An announcement by the Treasury said the Mammut Industrial Group, also known as Mammut Industries and its subsidiaries were no longer under United States sanctions.

Mammut Industries and three of its main executives/shareholders were put in the sanctions list in were sanctioned in September 2020 by the Trump administrationpursuant to Executive Order 13382, issued by President George Bush in 2005, targeting “weapons of mass destruction and their proliferators and supporters.” The executive order threatened fines, imprisonment, and freezing assets.

The Mammut Industrial Group and its subsidiaries are private companies with thousands of employees in Iran, were accused by the US to have supplied "military-grade, dual-use goods" to Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization and specifically, Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which makes liquid-propelled missiles.

In early July, the three individuals, Behzad Daniel Ferdows, Mehrzad Manuel Ferdows, and Mohammad-Reza Dezfulian were all excluded from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

At the time, the Treasury in a statement said that "These delistings do not reflect any change in US government sanctions policy towards Iran,” a Treasury spokesman told Reuters anonymously. “They have nothing to do with ongoing JCPOA negotiations in Vienna.”

The Biden Administration, refuting former president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, announced its intention to return to the agreement. A round of talks began in Vienna with the participation of the remaining signatories of the deal, with the US indirectly negotiating with Iran on the sidelines.

After six rounds of talks Iran suspended the meetings in June saying its new president needed time to form a government. But two months after Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) came to office, Tehran is still not ready to resume negotiations.

The United States and its European allies have become concerned and have been urging Iran to return to the negotiating table, citing Tehran’s continued enrichment of uranium.

The Treasury’s announcement on Friday did not provide any explanation for the removal of Mammut and its subsidiaries, simply listing the delisted entities with their legal names and addresses.

During his one-day visit to Bushehr, in southern Iran, Raisi (Raeesi) said the current 1,000-megawatt (MW) capacity of Iran’s sole nuclear power plant would be tripled with further development, and that the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was committed to increasing production from nuclear power to 10,000 MW.

Construction began in 2017 on two new nuclear reactors, due for completion in 2024 and 2026 at Bushehr with a projected combined capacity of 2,100 MW. The work follows a 2014 agreement between Iran and Rosatom, Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation, which carried out most of the construction of the first reactor and provided fuel when it began operating in 2011.

With electricity generation at around 50,000-56,000 MW in the past few years, rising no more than 2,000 MW a year, Iran has struggled to meet consumption that has been rising and is encouraged by subsidized prices.

With an annual average of 300 sunny days in over two-thirds of the country Iran has great potential for solar energy, but renewables including hydro-power account for 7 percent of Iran’s energy generation compared to 90 percent from natural gas.

It is not clear why the government does not invest in renewable energy instead of nuclear reactors, especially given the frequent occurrence of earthquakes in the country that could pose a ganger to nuclear plants.

Iran’s daily electricity consumption reached 64,000 MW June this year, leaving a shortfall of around 10,000 MW. With first international and later United States sanctions during most of the past decade, the government has struggled to renew ageing power plants and grid amid estimates that 10 percent of electricity is lost during transmission. Drought this this year has brought a reduction in hydroelectric power, 15 percent of which comes from dams.

The situation has resulted in higher electricity imports from neighboring countries and a reduction in electricity exports to limit outages in cities and damage to industries including agro-food.

There has been controversy over cryptocurrency mining, which makes heavy demand on electricity. Some argue that around 7 percent of global cryptocurrency mining takes place in Iran, due to one of the world’s cheapest electricity tariffs and the advantages e-currencies offer in enabling trade away from United States scrutiny. Estimates of energy demand from this miningrange from 300 MW to 3,000 MW.

The US State Department once again said an "imminent" return to indirect talks in Vienna is necessary to revive the Iran nuclear deal because the process cannot "drag out' indefinitely.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday "this is not a process that can drag out or that can be dragged out. We are firmly of the belief that we need to work quickly. We need to work with alacrity and a great deal of speed to see to it."

"We have made very clear that we are prepared, willing and able to return to Vienna as soon as we have a partner to negotiate with indirectly, Price said.

While Iran has said it is ready to rejoin the talks, it has not yet offered a date for a resumption, named a negotiating team or indicated that it is willing to pick up where the negotiations left off in June, according to the officials.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian appeared to harden his country’s position while he was speaking to reporters in Beirut on Thursday. He said that US and European verbal statements about the need to resume talks are not sufficient. He stressed that if the West fulfils its commitment under the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), Iran will also abide by its obligations.

Amir-Abdollahian went on to say that Iran will make decisions and take actions if the United States removes sanctions and Europe acts according to its commitments under the JCPOA.

Iran has been hinting that the United States should release frozen Iranian funds before it returns to the talks. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told Iranian state television on October 2 that he refused overtures to meet with US officials while he was attending the UN General Assembly in New York in September, asking that Washington should first unfreeze $10 billion.

On Thursday, US Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, spoke with a top South Korean foreign ministry official asking Seoul’s help in efforts to revive the Vienna talks. The only help South Korea could provide is if it releases Iranian funds frozen by its banks because of US sanctions.

Price in his briefing did not confirm or deny that Malley discussed the $7 billion of frozen Iranian funds in Korea.

The State Department spokesman again mentioned recent US threats that if the Vienna talks do not resume, it has to resort to other options to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

We’re not entertaining at the moment, or at least not discussing publicly, other modalities, other alternatives because we still have a framework in the form of the JCPOA that would provide precisely what we would like to see,” Price told reporters.