Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has issued a directive stating that the country’s near-weapons grade uranium will not be sent abroad. This is in response to one of the key demands made by the US
at peace talks.
According to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency, the US had demanded that Tehran hand over 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, limit operations to a single nuclear facility and accept that Washington would not pay compensation for war-related damage.
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In response to these demands, Iranian sources told Reuters, “The Supreme Leader’s directive, and the consensus within the establishment, is that the stockpile of enriched uranium should not leave the country.”
In April, US President Donald Trump had Tehran has agreed to hand over its stockpile of enriched uranium and that the two sides were “close” to a peace deal. “They’ve agreed to give us back the nuclear dust,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to the enriched uranium that the US says could be used to build nuclear weapons.
According to Reuters, Israeli officials have said that Trump has assured Israel that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, needed to make an atomic weapon, will be sent out of Iran and that any peace deal must include a clause on this.
Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said he will not consider the war to be over until the enriched uranium is removed from Iran.
These remarks come amid shaky ceasefire deal that stopped the war between US-Israel and Iran. Since the first strikes on February 28, Iran has fired at Gulf states hosting US military bases while fighting broke out between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Reuters quoted two senior Iranian sources saying that there is a deep suspicion in Iran that the pause in hostilities was a tactical deception by Washington to create a sense of security before it renews airstrikes.
On Wednesday, Iran’s top peace negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said that “obvious and hidden moves by the enemy” showed the Americans were preparing new attacks.
