Iran Preparing to Reopen Prohibited Nuclear Sites
Ali Larijani / AP
BY: Adam Kredo
July 21, 2016 2:50 pm
Top Iranian leaders have instructed the country’s atomic energy organization to prepare for the reopening of multiple nuclear sites that had been shuttered as part of last summer’s nuclear agreement.
Ali Larijani, the leader of Iran’s parliament, requested this week that the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization prepare a plan to reopen nuclear enrichment facilitates that had been shutdown as part of the effort to limit Tehran’s research into nuclear weapons technology, according to comments carried in Iran’s state-controlled media.
Iranian leaders are displeased with a recent United Nations report chastising the Islamic Republic for violating international agreements prohibiting the country’s work on ballistic missiles.
The U.N. described these repeated test launches as not consistent with international accords. Iranian leaders dismissed the report as “biased.”
Iranian lawmakers recently passed legislation in June 2015, mandating the country preserve its nuclear infrastructure if more sanctions are placed on the country.
“It is necessary for the Atomic Energy Organization to act in compliance with the law passed on the reopening of the nuclear plant to enrich uranium proportionate to the country’s needs and prepare a plan and keeps the [parliament] posted on it,” Larijani said.
The Iranian leader further chided the United States for pursuing “diversionary actions” aimed at undermining the nuclear agreement.
“While regretting the U.N. secretary general’s move, the Majlis warn the U.S. administration, the House of Representatives, and the Senate that diversionary actions against the nuclear deal have reached a point where Iran has no other option but to retaliate,” he said.
Iran’s most recent threats come amid a growing scandal in Washington, D.C., over revelations that the Obama administration misled the American public and members of Congress about the precise contents of the nuclear deal.
Secret documents obtained by the Associated Press show that key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear procurement efforts will be lifted in a decade, putting Iran within six months of a nuclear bomb.
The Washington Free Beacon disclosed on Wednesday that lawmakers critical of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran were kept in the dark about the agreement.
The documents also call into question public claims made by Obama administration officials about the methods by which Iranian enrichment activities would be curtailed.
“Of course the administration has not told lawmakers this and of course it’s sadly predicable,” Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) said to the Free Beacon on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday. “There’s no celebration in the fact that the administration has gotten this [deal] wrong at conceivably every level. It is severe news and it has to be dealt with.”
Roskam went on to state that these documents invalidate the entirety of the nuclear deal.
