Wednesday that it planned to re-start frozen nuclear activities at its Uranium Conversion Facility; a move that could provoke a major international crisis. “We will, God willing, remove the seals and resume activities today,” Ali Aghamohammadi, the spokesman
for Irans Supreme National Security Council, told reporters in Tehran. He was referring to seals placed by international nuclear inspectors on the conversion plant in the central city of Isfahan.
Iran Focus
“We will, God willing, remove the seals and resume activities today,” Ali Aghamohammadi, the spokesman for Irans Supreme National Security Council, told reporters in Tehran. He was referring to seals placed by international nuclear inspectors on the conversion plant in the central city of Isfahan.
Irans defiant tone ignores warnings by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations that it must refrain from carrying out the threat to resume its nuclear activities.
Observers see the new brinkmanship by the Iranian regime as a direct outcome of the consolidation of power in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Aghamohammadis announcement came hours after hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office. The new president is fiercely loyal to the Supreme Leader, who today said that Iran would never be blackmailed by Western governments.
Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday that it planned to resume uranium ore conversion without further delay.
Aghamohammadi said that IAEA inspectors were working in the plant to have monitoring equipment up and running, but he rejected a request by the UNs nuclear watchdog to allow a week for the transfer and installation of cameras and other surveillance equipment at the site.
“One week is not acceptable to Iran for the installation of equipment”, SNSC spokesman Ali Aghamohammadi said. “Iran is hoping we will be able to resume activities today”.
In an interview with the state-owned Mehr news agency, Aghamohammadi said the European trio wanted to postpone the presentation of its proposals to Iran as a way of taking a position against the incoming President Ahmadinejad.
But Mr. Khatami insisted that the UCF plant must resume its work on his watch, so that the Europeans would not be able to blame their impotence in finding a solution on Irans next president and say that he is responsible or the failure of negotiations, Aghamohammadi said.
We have run out of patience. We spent twenty odd months talking to them for nothing, the senior official added.
