'Iran could enrich Uranium up to 90% purity if needed', Rouhani says before regime change

In a rare comment, outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, on July 14 said that the Islamic Republic could enrich Uranium up to 90 percent purity weapons-grade if its nuclear reactors needed it. Rouhani’s comments come as the fifth round of negotiations on the 2015 JCPOA treaty stalled late in June with no fixed date of resumption. However, Rouhani asserted his desire for the revival of the controversial nuclear deal, which limits Iran’s power for nuclear enrichment in exchange for US sanction relief. 

"Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation can enrich uranium by 20% and 60% and if one day our reactor needs it, it can enrich uranium to 90% purity," President Hassan Rouhani told a cabinet meeting, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

In 2015, the P5+1 nations signed the JCPOA deal with Iran which allowed Tehran to scaled back its nuclear or uranium enrichment program in exchange for promises of economic relief. The nuclear deal caps the fissile purity to which Tehran can refine uranium at 3.67 percent, which is well below that 20 percent that Iran had achieved before the pact. However, even after the deal was signed Tehran breached it by purifying Uranium at 20 and 60 percent. Irked by noncompliance, Washington in 2018 pulled back from the pact and slapped hard-hitting sanctions. Last month, the US under Joe Biden agreed to repeal nearly 1,040 Trump-era sanctions imposed on Iran as an effort to revive the controversial pact. 

'Missed the opportunity' 

Meanwhile, Rouhani, who will hand over the presidency to hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi on August 5, implicitly criticized Iran's top decision-makers for "not allowing" his government to revive the nuclear deal during its term in office. He buttressed his stance asserting that he was “sorry” for missing the opportunity to revive the pact. "They took away the opportunity to reach an agreement from this government. We are sorry to miss this opportunity," the state news agency IRNA quoted Rouhani as saying.

Image: AP