TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran has asked the United Nations nuclear body to avoid publishing “unnecessary” details about Tehran’s nuclear program, state TV reported on Sunday, the day after Germany, France and Britain said it Tehran “has no credible civilian use” for its development of uranium metal.
The report cited a statement by Iran’s nuclear department that asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to avoid publishing details about the Iranian nuclear program that could cause confusion.
“The international atomic energy agency is expected to avoid providing unnecessary details and to avoid making room for misunderstandings” in the international community, the statement said. He gave no further details.
On Saturday, Germany, France and Britain pressed Iran to withdraw its plan to develop metallic uranium, calling it “the last planned breach” of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The aim of the agreement is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, something Iran insists it does not want to do.
“Iran has no reliable civilian use for metallic uranium,” they said in a joint statement. “The production of metallic uranium has potentially serious military implications.”
On Thursday, the IAEA said Iran had said it had started installing equipment for the production of metallic uranium. He said Tehran continues its plans to conduct research and development in the production of metallic uranium as part of its “stated goal of designing a better type of fuel”.
Iran reacted to the European declaration on Sunday, saying that Iran informed the UN nuclear body almost two decades ago of its plans for “peaceful and conventional” production of metallic uranium. She also said she provided the agency with updated information two years ago about her plans to produce advanced silicide fuel.
The statement states that metallic uranium is an “intermediate product” in the manufacture of uranium silicate, a fuel used in nuclear reactors that is safer and has more energy capacity than uranium oxide fuel, than Iran currently produces.
The three European nations alongside the USA, Russia and China signed the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran that banned the research and production of metallic uranium.
President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran, in which Tehran had agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. After the United States increased sanctions, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the agreement’s limits to its nuclear development.
President-elect Joe Biden, who was vice president when the deal was signed during the Obama administration, said he hoped to get the United States back to the deal.