The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi made the remarks in reaction to a report by Bloomberg that claimed “the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is trying to clarify how Iran accumulated uranium enriched to 84% purity.” It added that the IAEA inspectors had found highly-enriched uranium particles “within the network of pipes connecting centrifuges used to separate uranium isotopes.”

Speaking to Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Kamalvandi said Bloomberg’s report was aimed at distorting the realities.

He added that during the enrichment process, the mere existence of individual uranium particles enriched to above 60 percent purity does not mean that uranium is being enriched at levels above 60 percent.

The official was also quoted by Fars news agency as saying that existence of such particles was a totally normal issue in the course of uranium enrichment and could happen even when the feedstock entering centrifuge cascades decreased momentarily.

“What matters is the final product and the Islamic Republic of Iran has never embarked on [uranium] enrichment at a level above 60 percent,” Kamalvandi said, adding, “The IAEA is well aware that such issues happen during the [nuclear] work. In various cases in the past, different levels of enrichment have been observed and have been accounted for, and this latest issue will be definitely clarified as well.”

He noted that the IAEA does not usually inform its members of such issues, saying, “Publicizing these issues through [Western] media once again shows that, unfortunately, the IAEA has lost its professional and impartial standing since a long time ago. It intentionally provides Western media with technical information, and without a doubt, this conduct will further discredit this important international organization.”

Speaking in an interview with Russia’s Sputnik news agency in early February, the head of the AEOI criticized the UN nuclear watchdog for the leakage of information about Iran’s nuclear energy program to the opponents of diplomatic efforts aimed at reviving the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“The International Atomic Energy Agency gives information about Iran’s nuclear program to the opponents of the negotiations held to revive the JCPOA,” Mohammad Eslami said.

He also expressed regret over the IAEA’s “political, unprofessional behavior” in connection with the disclosure of the JCPOA’s confidential reports to those who oppose the negotiations aimed at restoring the 2015 accord, which was unilaterally abandoned by the US in 2018.

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“We have exceeded 120 kilograms and in this matter, we are ahead of schedule. Earlier, based on the JCPOA, 20% uranium fuel was supposed to be provided for the Tehran reactor(from abroad), but it was not given, and if we had not started making this amount of fuel ourselves, this would have turned into one of our problems today,” Mohammad Eslami said in a live interview on national TV on Saturday evening.

The Iranian nuclear chief said the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has almost fully adhered to the parliament’s law on sanctions removal.

The law was passed in December last year in response to a failure by remaining parties to the nuclear deal to fulfill their obligations and make up for unilateral U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

“20% and 60% nuclear fuel production has been carried out and planning is underway for the production of uranium metal, IR2M and IR6 centrifuges are being built,” he explained.

Eslami also criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency for failing to denounce a sabotage operation against Iran’s Karaj nuclear site back in June, adding that the IAEA’s silence effectively encouraged such terrorist acts.

Several Iranian nuclear energy sites and many nuclear scientists have come under attack over the past years with Israel behind them.

Eslami explained that the agency was not allowed to replace damaged cameras at the Iranian sabotaged site as required under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action because the U.S. and the Europeans have failed to keep their part of the deal.

Meanwhile referring to the cameras installed at Iran’s nuclear sites, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said that the Safeguard and JCPOA-related cameras are fundamentally different from each other.

Asked about the difference between the cameras installed at Iran’s nuclear sites, Eslami said, “At the definite time, IAEA inspectors review the memory cards of the safeguard cameras in the nuclear sites. then they cut the cards, leaving them aside in a sealed envelope.”

In another word, under regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Safeguards Agreement, the agency’s cameras record data at Iran’s nuclear sites just like other sites across the world.

In December 2020, the Iranian Parliament passed the Law on “Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions and Protect Rights of the People” that prompted the Iranian administration to restrict the IAEA’s inspections and accelerate the development of the country’s nuclear program beyond the limits set by the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

The IAEA inspectors take out these old memory cards and seal them in the presence of the Iranian side, Mohammad Eslami said, adding that therefore the inspectors do not have access to the data.

They only insert the new memory card, he said.

He also spoke about the number of cameras that were damaged in the wake of terrorist operations.

The IAEA sought to install a new camera on the Karaj nuclear site, he said, adding, “But we told them that this is not necessary.”

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The move is the latest of several recent announcements by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to further breach the deal, which it started violating in 2019 in retaliation for Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement and the reimposition of US sanctions against Tehran.

This step was one of many mentioned in a law passed by Iran‘s parliament last month in response to the killing of the country’s top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel. Such moves by Iran could complicate efforts by US president-elect Joe Biden to rejoin the deal.

“It is an additional blow,” a diplomat based in Vienna told AFP.

“Iran has informed the agency that in order to comply with a legal act recently passed by the country’s parliament, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran intends to produce low-enriched uranium up to 20 percent at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant,” the IAEA said in a statement.

An IAEA report to member states earlier on Friday obtained by Reuters used similar wording in describing a letter by Iran to the IAEA dated 31 December.

“Iran‘s letter to the agency … did not say when this enrichment activity would take place,” the IAEA statement said.

Fordow was built inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from aerial bombardment, and the 2015 deal does not allow enrichment there. Iran is already enriching at Fordow with first-generation IR-1 centrifuges.

Iran has breached the deal’s 3.67% limit on the purity to which it can enrich uranium, but it has only gone up to 4.5% so far, well short of the 20% it achieved before the deal and the 90% that is weapons-grade.

The deal’s main aim was to extend the time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it chose to, to at least a year from roughly two to three months. It also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.

US intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons programme that it halted in 2003. Iran denies ever having had one.

Biden, who takes office on January 20, has signalled Washington would rejoin the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action aimed at limiting Iran‘s nuclear programme.

The deal has been unravelling ever since Donald Trump dramatically withdrew from it in May 2018 and imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, has said the change of administration in the US means that there is “a last window” for progress that “shouldn’t be wasted”.

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Addressing the 59th annual meeting of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) on Thursday, Rouhani said Tehran faces no restrictions today when it comes to atomic energy.

“Today, uranium enrichment is carried out more than that time [before the deal was reached] and Iran did not stand idly by: If they [the other deal parties] reduced their commitments, we did so as well,” Iran President added.

He said when US President Donald Trump chose to pull his country out of the multilateral nuclear deal, Iran remained patient and refused to make the same “mistake.”

Iran, instead, urged the remaining parties to the deal to compensate for Washington’s exit and told them that “if they make up for [the US exit], we would stay in the JCPOA, and if they fail do so, we will, in turn, reduce our commitments,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani said Iran adopted the “right policy and did the right thing,” prompting the entire world — even the Europeans themselves and Trump’s own friends — to condemn the US president’s move as “wrong.”

The Iranian president added that Tehran proved with the JCPOA that it seeks interaction with the world.

Rouhani once again slammed the US president for violating the deal and unilaterally pulling out of it, saying Trump’s “unpredictable” behavior has caused troubles not only for Iran but the whole world.

The Iranian chief executive also criticized the US for threatening the European parties to the nuclear deal — France, Britain, and Germany — and pushing them to withdraw from the accord.

Rouhani’s remarks came after The Washington Post reported that Trump’s administration had threatened to impose a 25-percent tariff on European automobile imports if the trio — known as EU3 or E3 — refused to formally accuse Iran of violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The report was published shortly after the European trio said in a joint statement on Tuesday that they had triggered the JCPOA’s dispute mechanism, which amounts to a formal accusation that Tehran had broken the terms of the deal.

The European measure could lead to the restoration of anti-Iran UN sanctions, which had been lifted by the JCPOA.

The US under Trump left the JCPOA in May 2018 and restored the sanctions that it had lifted. The UK, France, and Germany also bowed to the sanctions and refused to meet Iran’s business interests under the deal despite an earlier pledge to do so.

Trump has been critical of the agreement and called it the worst deal ever negotiated, proposing new negotiations to reach a “better” accord.

This comes as the JCPOA has been endorsed by the UN Security Council as a resolution.

Elsewhere in his Thursday’s remarks, Rouhani said Iran has grown stronger than ever despite all the international pressure facing the country and will continue to tread the path of progress despite US plots and economic sanctions.

Rouhani further hailed Iran’s recent move to target the US airbase of Ain al-Assad in Anbar province in western Iraq in retaliation for the US assassination of senior Iranian military commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

It is very rare that a country “stands up to the US and openly launches missiles against an important American military base in the region,” he said, adding the attack forced the US “to retreat from its threat.”

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“Westerners are well aware that Iran’s (uranium) enrichment stockpile and the number of (centrifuge) machines are increasing, and that the capacity of research and development is also expanding, and these issues have upset the plans of Westerners for halting (the progress of) Iran.” Iran News quotes what Behrouz Kamalvandi said in an interview with IRIB on Wednesday.

Commenting on Iran’s strategy for a phased reduction of commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Kamalvandi said only two more steps would end all of Iran’s JCPOA undertakings and have the country return to the pre-JCPOA conditions.

As soon as the Fordow nuclear site comes into operation for uranium enrichment and the number of centrifuge machines rises, Iran will practically have no more commitments to the JCPOA and only the monitoring issues will remain, he noted.

Pointing to a 2018 order from Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei for increasing the level of Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity to 190,000 SWU (Separative Work Unit) in the long term, Kamalvandi said the current trend would enable Tehran to reach the production capacity of 172,000 SWU at the end of a 15-year period.

“We can even achieve (the production capacity of) one million SWU, depending on how the (centrifuge) machines and apparatuses would evolve,” the spokesman underlined.

“At present, we can easily manufacture the best centrifuges,” Kamalvandi said, adding that Iran would have faced many problems, as in the pharmaceutical industry, without progress in the nuclear industry over the past decades.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, US, Britain, France, and Germany) on July 14, 2015, reached a conclusion over the text of the nuclear deal.

The accord took effect in January 2016 and was supposed to terminate all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran all at once, but its implementation was hampered by the US policies and its eventual withdrawal from the deal.

In May 2018, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the nuclear accord.

Following the US withdrawal, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the deal.

However, the EU’s failure of ensure Iran’s economic interests forced Tehran to stop honoring certain commitments, including an unlimited rise in the stockpile of enriched uranium.

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