Iran nuclear chief says IAEA officials in Iran to remove ambiguities

Tehran, Feb 23 The Iranian nuclear chief has said the officials of the IAEA are in Tehran and have been inspecting the country's nuclear facilities since two days to resolve the ambiguities.

Mohammad Eslami, President of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), on Wednesday made the remarks to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting, noting Tehran is continuing its cooperation and relations with the IAEA within the framework of the safeguards agreements, according to Iranian Students' News Agency.

Answering a question about the claim in a recent Bloomberg report that "Iran is enriching uranium to levels above 60 per cent," Eslami noted that it was due to a misperception by one of the inspectors.

He said Iran is always careful to prevent any new ambiguity in the process of cooperation with the IAEA, Xinhua news agency reported.

Turning to a 2015 nuclear deal, Eslami added the agreement was a contract between Iran and the P5+1 based on efforts to build mutual trust, adding that it is quite "unacceptable" to Iran that a political pressure campaign would seek to force Tehran into fulfilling its commitments one-sidedly while others are not honouring theirs.

Bloomberg's Sunday report cited two senior diplomats as claiming that IAEA inspectors in Iran last week detected uranium enriched to 84 per cent purity, "just 6 per cent below that needed for a nuclear weapon."

On Sunday, Iranian official news agency IRNA quoted the AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying that the Bloomberg report was a "distortion of the facts" and part of a smear campaign.

Over the past few months, the IAEA has criticised Iran for its lack of cooperation with the agency. On November 17, 2022, the IAEA's Board of Governors passed a resolution proposed by the US, Britain, France, and Germany that called on Iran to collaborate with the agency's investigators regarding the alleged "traces of uranium" at a number of its "undeclared" sites.

Iran has repeatedly rejected such allegations.