Dalga Khatinoglu, Trend Agency's Iran Service Department Chief
Iran says it's preparing to construct more nuclear power plants that work on enriched uranium, while the U.S. and its allies set to demand an end to high-level uranium enrichment and the closure of a facility built deep under a mountain at Fordo site.
After a 15 month suspension, Iran and 5+1 contries (Russia, China, the UK, The U.S., France + Germany) agreed to hold new round of negotiations over Iran's nuclear program in Istanbul. Iran says the negotiations planned to be held in two rounds, if Istanbul talks be progressive, the second round of talks will be held in Baghdad.
The New York Times on Saturday cited U.S. and European diplomats, who said the U.S. and other Western nations planned to demand that Iran immediately closed and ultimately dismantle a recently completed nuclear facility under a mountain near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom.
This precondition seems to be apparently fair, because Iran planned to produce 20 percent-enriched uranium for Amirabad nuclear research power plant, which was loaded with domestically produced nuclear fuel in February 2011. Iran does not have another pool-type nuclear reactor like Amirabad. Then, the process of halting the uranium enrichment in 20 percent-level may be in favor of both Iran and the West.
The time required for increasing a uranium enrichment level from 20 percent to 90 percent -which has a military application is very shorter than the time required for enriching from 3.5 percent to 90 percent. In other words, the enrichment level and time required for further purification of uranium have the inverse ratio.
A proposal, or let's say, putting such preconditions as the halting of uranium enrichment by a 20-percent level in Iran or a closure of Fordo site will likely to face failure, without a positive result.
Iranian ambassador to International Atomic Energy Agency told Trend on Feb.28 that Tehran planned to construct pool-type NPPs working by 20-percent-enriched uranium and this is Iranians' pride.
Iran's 3.5 percent-enriched uranium reserves reached 95.4 kg, while its 19.75 percent-enriched uranium reserves increased up to 5,441 kg, Soltanieh said.
This volume of enriched uranium has the extreme value for Tehran, which has spent billions dollars for launching nuclear facilities and endured the years of the sanctions imposed by UNSC, the U.S., EU and their allies.
Let's recall again when Ahmadinejad's administration and the 5+1 countries were negotiating over exchanging Iran's 1,200 kg of 3.5 percent-enriched uranium with nuclear fuel for Amirabad in 2010. Iranian Supreme Leaders' closest ally and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called this deal as "Chocolate versus gold".
Finally, it is avoidable to abandon nuclear activities for Iran until reaching a technical point, which allow Iran to build nuclear weapon whenever it decides, like Germany, Japan, South Korea and others.
This does not mean that Iran is making a nuclear bomb, but Iran isolated by nuclear Russia in North, Pakistan in East, Israel in its west side has enough motivation to reach a point capable to make A-bomb to defense itself in urgent circumstances.
However, the probability of launching a war with atomic Iran is zero, like North Korea's case. The international community is a witness of Iraqi and Libyan governments' fate after abandoning their nuclear activities.