Tehran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb, but it has not yet decided whether to build one, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Al Jazeera’s Arab service on Sunday.
“In a few days we can enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce uranium enriched to 90%,” added Kamal Kharrazi. Enriched uranium is one of the elements of a nuclear bomb.
In 2018, former US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. The pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), envisaged lifting some economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program.
After Trump withdrew the US from the pact, Iran went beyond the limits of nuclear activity. In the last months of last year, the country began to enrich uranium to unprecedented levels and restricted the activities of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body responsible for overseeing Iranian installations.
Iran has long denied that it wants to produce nuclear weapons, saying it only refines uranium to generate energy for civilian use. Also according to Tehran, violations of the international agreement are reversible if the United States lifts sanctions and returns to the agreement.
However, indirect negotiations between Iran and the government of President Joe Biden, aimed at bringing Washington and Tehran back to compliance with the nuclear pact, have been stalled since March.
