TEHRAN, Iran: The head of Iran’s nuclear program said on Monday that the country is now producing more low-enriched uranium daily, after restarting an underground lab.
Ali Akbar Salehi of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran made the comments as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also called on hard-liners to support the country’s troubled nuclear deal, saying it could open up international arms sales for the Islamic Republic next year.
Iran has broken out of the accord’s limits since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord between Tehran and world powers over a year ago.
Salehi said in Tehran that the country is now producing at least 5.5 kilograms daily. That’s compared to what Tehran had been producing — about 450 grams of low-enriched uranium per day.
Salehi said that’s due in part to restarting enrichment at Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility.
“I believe (that) in total, 5.5 kilograms is the daily volume of uranium enrichment in Natanz and Fordo,” Salehi told the AP, mentioning Iran’s other nuclear facility at Natanz.
Iran currently enriches uranium to up to 4.5 percent, far below weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
However, the more uranium it enriches over time will begin to narrow the so-called “breakout period” Iran would need to have enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb — should it choose to build one. Analysts had put that time at a year, under the restrictions of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. However, Western nations pushed for the nuclear deal over its concerns about the program.
Rouhani spoke on Monday in the city of Rafsanjan in Iran’s southwest Kerman province, as part of a provincial tour ahead of planned parliamentary elections in February. The day before, in Yazd, he faced some heckling from a crowd of hard-liners, despite announcing the discovery of a 53-billion-barrel oil field in the country.
On Monday, he made a point to stress that “by continuing the nuclear deal, we will reach a huge political, defensive and security goal.”
“If we save the nuclear deal, Iran’s arms embargo will be lifted and we can buy weapons or sell our weapons to the world. This is one of the deal’s significant impacts,” Rouhani said.
The end of the weapons embargo, imposed by the United Nations, already worries the Trump administration.
Under the terms of the deal, a United Nations-imposed arms embargo on Iran is slated to be lifted in October 2020, five years after the accord’s adoption.
However, it remains unclear whether the UN would allow the ban to be lifted, given the circumstances the crumbling deal finds itself in today.
Iran underground lab helps produce more low-enriched uranium
Iran underground lab helps produce more low-enriched uranium
- The country is now producing at least 5.5 kilograms of low-enriched uranium daily
- Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
Thousands of Libyans gather for the funeral of Qaddafi’s son who was shot and killed this week
- As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him
- Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details
BANI WALID, Libya: Thousands converged on Friday in northwestern Libya for the funeral of Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed earlier this week when four masked assailants stormed into his home and fatally shot him.
Mourners carried his coffin in the town of Bani Walid, 146 kilometers (91 miles) southeast of the capital, Tripoli, as well as large photographs of both Seif Al-Islam, who was known mostly by his first name, and his father.
The crowd also waved plain green flags, Libya’s official flag from 1977 to 2011 under Qaddafi, who ruled the country for more than 40 years before being toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011. Qaddafi was killed later that year in his hometown of Sirte as fighting in Libya escalated into a full-blown civil war.
As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him.
Attackers at his home
Seif Al-Islam, 53, was killed on Tuesday inside his home in the town of Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.
Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details. Seif Al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying “four masked men” had stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination,” after disabling security cameras.
Seif Al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while trying to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017, after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty.
“The pain of loss weighs heavily on my heart, and it intensifies because I can’t bid him farewell from within my homeland — a pain that words can’t ease,” Seif Al-Islam’s brother Mohamed Qaddafi, who lives in exile outside Libya though his current whereabouts are unknown, wrote on Facebook on Friday.
“But my solace lies in the fact that the loyal sons of the nation are fulfilling their duty and will give him a farewell befitting his stature,” the brother wrote.
Since the uprising that toppled Qaddafi, Libya plunged into chaos during which the oil-rich North African country split, with rival administrations now in the east and west, backed by various armed groups and foreign governments.
Qaddafi’s heir-apparent
Seif Al-Islam was Qaddafi’s second-born son and was seen as the reformist face of the Qaddafi regime — someone with diplomatic outreach who had worked to improve Libya’s relations with Western countries up until the 2011 uprising.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Seif Al-Islam that included a travel ban and an assets freeze for his inflammatory public statements encouraging violence against anti-Qaddafi protesters during the 2011 uprising. The International Criminal Court later charged him with crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.
In July 2021, Seif Al-Islam told the New York Times that he’s considering returning to Libya’s political scene after a decade of absence during which he observed Middle East politics and reportedly reorganized his father’s political supporters.
He condemned the country’s new leaders. “There’s no life here. Go to the gas station — there’s no diesel,″ Seif Al-Islam told the Times.
In November 2021, he announced his candidacy in the country’s presidential election in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Qaddafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.
The country’s High National Elections Committee disqualified him, but the election wasn’t held over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups.
