EC secretary: Iran should start enriching uranium over 20% if talks fail

Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council (EC) Mohsen Rezayee called on the government to enrich uranium to purity levels above 20% if the talks with the world powers end in failure. "In think that if the western side pushes the negotiations into failure, Iran shouldn’t limit itself to 20% enrichment and should continue enriching uranium to higher grades to the point that the national interests allow," Rezayee said, addressing the annual forum of Iranian Land's Islamic Party in Tehran on Friday. He said Iran is entitled to the right to enrich uranium to purity levels above 20%, and said a number of countries, including Brazil and Argentina, are now enriching uranium to 80% grade and use it as a good source of income. Rezayee advised the western powers, specially the US, to seize the present opportunity for cutting a deal with Iran by accepting Iran's right to use peaceful nuclear technology and removing all sanctions against the country, and said, Washington's failures in Syria and Ukraine show that the country is no more able to start a new challenge since the US will have to pay a heavy price and lose the region if it stirs a fresh wave of tension in the Middle-East. In relevant remarks in April, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi underlined that the country is entitled to enrich uranium to the level of 90%. "Firstly, we believe that we are entitled to any right that any NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and (International Atomic Energy) Agency member has, which means that enrichment (of uranium) from 1% to 90% is our right," Salehi said. He said that Iran has accepted to limit its enrichment program to the level of 5% only in a voluntary move based on the Geneva deal inked between Tehran and the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) sealed in November. Senior diplomats of Iran and the six world powers ended another round of talks in Vienna on Friday. The Iranian negotiators had several rounds of bilateral talks with the delegations of the EU and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany), including a rather lengthy meeting with the US team, during their three-day-long talks in the Austrian capital. A senior diplomat close to the Iranian team of negotiators in the Vienna nuclear talks with the world powers urged the Western states to stop their excessive demands, reiterating that Iran is standing firm on its rights. "The West should give up its excessive demands and gather a precise assessment of the realities existing on the ground," the diplomat told FNA in Vienna on Friday afternoon, stressing that the policy of pressuring Iran has always proved futile and backfired. The source said the Iranian negotiators have come to Vienna to establish the nation's rights, reiterating that they would never retreat along this path. He said "difference in views, specially around such a vital discussion as Iran's nuclear issue, is considered to be natural", but "given the recent developments, the western states are displaying that they are not practicing the pragmatism that seemed to have developed in them to a certain level". Yet, the diplomat underlined that "the window of opportunity is still open for the western parties to step onto the realm of pragmatism".