Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday “there is nothing wrong” with reviving the nuclear deal under President Joe Biden, but “the infrastructure of our nuclear industry should not be touched.”
Khamenei maintained Iran’s insistence, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons.
“Accusations about Tehran seeking nuclear weapons [are] a lie and they know it. We do not want nuclear arms because of our religious beliefs. Otherwise, they would not have been able to stop it,” the ayatollah said, referring to an old fiction that the Quran forbids Muslim nations from having nuclear arsenals, a prohibition reinforced by a religious edict or fatwa from the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei.
In much the same vein as his pronouncement that a new nuclear deal would be acceptable, provided Iran does not have to give up any part of its nuclear program, Khamenei said Iran was happy to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), provided it does not try to inspect anything Tehran does not want it to see.
Khamenei said even this conditional cooperation with the IAEA could be suspended under a 2020 law passed by the Iranian parliament that said inspections would be terminated, and uranium enrichment increased, if the U.S. does not unilaterally lift all sanctions against Iran.
An alleged anonymous U.S. official told Reuters on Monday that the Biden administration is not actively negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran, but instead has given Tehran a list of “steps that might trigger a crisis” plus steps that might “create a better climate between the long-time antagonists.”
“We have made clear to them what escalatory steps they needed to avoid to prevent a crisis and what de-escalatory steps they could take to create a more positive context,” the official said.
Reuters’ source was responding to a report last week by Middle East Eye that Iran and the U.S. were close to signing a “temporary deal that would swap some sanctions relief for reducing Iranian uranium enrichment activities.”
According to Middle East Eye’s sources, the temporary deal would require Iran to stop enriching uranium beyond 60 percent and cooperate more fully with the IAEA. In return, the U.S. would allow Iran to export “up to a million barrels of oil per day” and gain access to frozen funds.
The Biden White House denounced this report as “false and misleading,” and the Iranian regime concurred with that statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the Biden administration is eager to strike an informal and temporary deal with Iran to prevent “nuclear breakout,” the enrichment of uranium to full weapons-grade. The terms of the deal Netanyahu described were fundamentally similar to the Middle East Eye report, plus a possible prisoner exchange.
Netanyahu said Israel would not be a party to any such deal.
“Our stance is clear: No agreement with Iran will oblige Israel. Israel will continue to do everything to defend itself,” he said.
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