Senior official denies plan to transfer Iranian enriched uranium abroad
A senior Iranian security official on Monday dismissed reports that highly enriched uranium could be shipped out of the country after Russia said it was ready to store Iran’s stockpiles as a possible option to ease tensions.
“Iranian officials have no intention of transferring enriched nuclear materials to any country,” Ali Bagheri, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said, according to Fars news agency.
Bagheri added that any potential talks between Iran and the United States over the country’s nuclear program would “not revolve around such an issue at all.”
The remarks came hours after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had long ago offered its services to process or store Iran’s enriched uranium.
Asked whether Russia was discussing with Iran and the United States the possibility of taking Iranian enriched uranium, Peskov said, “This topic has been on the agenda for a long time.”
He said Moscow was trying to de-escalate tensions around Iran “to the best of its ability” and remained in contact with all interested parties, Reuters reported.
SNSC secretary Ali Larijani met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday during a visit that coincided with rising tensions between Iran and the United States, amid media speculation that the issue of enriched material was on the agenda.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters on Monday that such speculation had been raised before.
“Iran’s enriched nuclear material is one of the issues that naturally would be determined in a negotiation,” Baqaei said.