Speaker:

Iran Scaled Down Centrifuges in Compliance with JCPOA

TEHRAN (defapress) – Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says the country has reduced the number of its centrifuge machines used for uranium enrichment by nearly two-thirds in accordance with the JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear deal with six other countries from which the US has withdrawn.

News ID: 72356

Date: 12 September 2018 - 13:58

In an address to a gathering of clerics in Iran’s southwestern province of Fars, Larijani said 9,000 centrifuge machines were spinning in the country when Tehran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) and announced plans to continue research on uranium enrichment.

The number of Iran’s centrifuges has now declined to 3,000 to 4,000, the speaker added.

Larijani further took a swipe at the US government for upsetting the international situation and withdrawing from the JCPOA, saying the US and the Zionist regime of Israel are plotting against Iran.

Back in June, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbara Salehi announced that the country has developed the necessary infrastructure at the Natanz nuclear facility for enrichment of uranium up to a level of one million SWU (Separative Work Unit).

In an interview from the new facility used for assembling centrifuge machines, Salehi had announced that the Natanz nuclear complex in central Iran has been configured to accommodate 48,000 centrifuge machines, meaning it has the potential for uranium enrichment up to a level of one million SWU.

On May 8, the US president pulled his country out of the JCPOA, which was achieved in Vienna in 2015 after years of negotiations among Iran and the Group 5+1. Following the US exit, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the accord.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has underlined that any decision to keep the JCPOA running without the US should be conditional on “practical guarantees” from the Europeans.

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