Iranian President Hasan Rohani has assured Wednesday that the country has the capacity to enrich uranium to 90 percent, amid tensions over Tehran’s breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal following the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the pact in 2018.
“The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) can enrich uranium to 20 percent, 60 percent and, if one day our reactor needs it, it can produce uranium enriched to 90 percent,” he said, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.
He also stressed that the Iranian authorities have shown that they can achieve solutions to problems with the international community through negotiations, in reference to the 2015 agreement, while at the same time he has once again charged against the United States for abandoning the pact and imposing sanctions against the country.
The Iranian government said last week that the country’s stance on the nuclear deal will remain unchanged once the president-elect, ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, takes office in early August, amid talks in Vienna to try to save the pact.
Iran has announced the withdrawal of its commitments on several of the deal’s points after the United States unilaterally pulled out of the pact in 2018, sparking fears among the remaining signatories of a possible collapse of the pact. However, Iranian officials have consistently defended that these steps can be reversed if the U.S. withdraws sanctions and returns to the agreement.
