guardian | Incensed by a report Iran
would transfer most of it enriched uranium to Russia, conservatives in
Tehran have levelled new criticisms against Iranian negotiators for not
standing firm against United States’ demands over the nuclear programme.
The Associated Press news agency on 2 January, quoting two anonymous
diplomats, claimed Iran had agreed in talks with world powers to send a
large portion of its enriched uranium to Russia, presumably for
processing into fuel for power generation. The conservative-aligned
website Nuclear Iran, which covers the nuclear negotiations including
their technical aspects, noted with alarm that exporting fissile
material had previously been regarded as one of the country’s “red
lines”.
Critics of talks in Iran were not appeased by a denial of the AP
story by Marzieh Afkham, spokeswoman of the foreign ministry, especially
as she did not comment on whether the US had suggested such a transfer
during the talks.
Two days after the AP report, in an interview with the conservative
website Raja News, parliamentary deputy Javad Karimi Ghoddousi claimed
the Americans had presented an eight-page set of proposals that the
Iranian negotiators considered “the worst yet”. Karimi Ghoddousi said
deputies had questioned members of Iran’s negotiation team, and while he
did not explicitly say he had been given details by one of the Iranian
team, readers of Raja News would know that Karimi Ghoddousi is a member
of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission,
which often has confidential briefings with negotiators, including
Mohammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister.
Among the demands the Americans had made, said Karimi Ghoddousi,
backing up the AP story, was the export of Iran’s enriched uranium
(which is enriched to under 5%, Iran’s 20% enriched
uranium, nearer to weapons grade, has been diluted or converted under
the 2013 Geneva interim nuclear agreement) to a third party, which they
suggested should be Russia.
