Iran is refusing to export its 300kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but is willing to dilute the purity of the stockpile it holds under the supervision of UN nuclear inspectorate the IAEA, Iranian sources have said.
The proposal will be at the heart of the offer Iran is due to make to the US in the next few days, as the US President Donald Trump weighs whether to use his vast naval build-up in the Middle East to attack the country.
The news came as protests erupted on Saturday at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences and at least two Tehran universities, prompting fresh clashes in the street.
The universities were reopening after being closed due to fear of protests. At Sharif University, the students chanted “Javed Shah”, “Until the mullah is shrouded, this homeland will not become a homeland” and “Death to the dictator.”
The Sharif University president urged the students to stop, warning that the authorities would force classes back online, reports The Guardian.
Iranians had reprised their protest slogans earlier this week to mark the 40th day since thousands of people were killed as a wave of demonstrations was peaking on January 8 and 9.
Meanwhile, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US is curious as to why Iran has not yet “capitulated” and agreed to curb its nuclear programme.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated,’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t... I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated,” Witkoff said in an interview on Fox News on Saturday.
“Why, under this pressure, with the amount of seapower and naval power over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do’? And yet it’s sort of hard to get them to that place.”
As Trump pushed the US to the brink of war with Iran, his aides urge him to focus more on voters’ economic worries, highlighting the political risks of military escalation ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
A senior White House official said that despite Trump’s bellicose rhetoric there was still no “unified support” within the administration to go ahead with an attack on Iran.
Iran has a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, close to weapons grade, but is willing to down-blend the purity to 20 percent or below.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is also claiming that there has been no US demand to abandon the right to enrich inside Iran. The focus is instead on the purity of the enrichment and the number of centrifuges to be permitted.
There had been discussion of the stockpile being sent to Russia, and for Iran’s domestic enrichment programme to be linked in with an overseas consortium, but Iranian sources are insisting the concept of a consortium has not been raised.
Iranian media close to the government quoted an Iranian diplomat as saying: “We emphasised this position during the negotiations that nuclear materials will not leave the country.”
The Iranian account of its relatively uncompromising position means a great deal of weight will have to be placed on the degree of access the IAEA would be given to inspect nuclear sites.
