Iran acknowledges accusation it enriched uranium to 84 percent

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran on Thursday directly acknowledged an accusation attributed to international inspectors that it enriched uranium to 84 percent purity for the first time, which would put the Islamic Republic closer than ever to weapons-grade material.

The acknowledgement by a news website linked to the highest reaches of Iran’s theocracy renews pressure on the West to address Tehran’s programme, which had been contained by the 2015 nuclear deal that America unilaterally withdrew from in 2018. Years of attacks across the Middle East have followed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently regained his country’s premiership, is threatening to take military action similar to when Israel previously bombed nuclear programmes in Iraq and Syria. But while those attacks saw no war erupt, Iran has an arsenal of ballistic missiles, drones and other weaponry it and its allies already have used in the region.

The acknowledgment on Thursday came from Iran’s Nour News, a website linked to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nour News separately is sanctioned by Canada for having “participated in gross and systematic human rights violations and perpetuated disinformation activities to justify the Iranian regime’s repression and persecution of its citizens” amid nationwide protests there.

The comments by Nour News follow days of muddled comments by Iran not directly acknowledging the accusation by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had enriched up to 84 percent.

Bloomberg first reported on Sunday that inspectors had detected uranium particles enriched up to 84 percent. The IAEA, a United Nations agency based in Vienna, has not denied the report, saying only “that the IAEA is discussing with Iran the results of recent agency verification activities.”

In its comments on Thursday, Nour News urged the IAEA to “not fall prey to the seduction of Western countries” and declare that Iran’s nuclear programme was “completely peaceful.”

“It will be clear soon that the IAEA surprising report of discovering 84 percent enriched uranium particles in Iran’s enrichment facilities was an inspector’s error or was a deliberate action to create political atmospheres against Iran on the eve of the meeting of its board,” Nour News said on Twitter. The board, a group of nations that oversees the IAEA, will meet on March 6 in Vienna.

The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday over Nour News’ remarks.

It wasn’t immediately clear where the 84 percent enrichment allegedly took place, though the IAEA has said it found two cascades of advanced IR-6 centrifuges at Iran’s underground Fordo facility “interconnected in a way that was substantially different from the mode of operation declared by Iran to the agency in November last year.”

Iran is known to have been enriching uranium at Fordo up to 60 percent purity — at level which nonproliferation experts already say has no civilian use for Tehran.