Ali Akbar Salehi who was speaking a meeting of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations held to address nuclear deal with the 5+1 on Wednesday, said that the nuclear negotiations had been led in a path so as to leave the major components of program intact; “exploration, extraction, enrichment, research reactors, and R and D are the major components of the nuclear program; JCPOA did not completely stymied the program, and we have only been slower in terms of progress,” Mr. Salehi told the meeting of experts. “In other activities even we have accelerated the pace, including in the volume of nuclear material which was 550 ton before, now we have 770 tons of nuclear material; this is a fact known to IAEA. With heavy water, we secured the project along with R and D, extraction and exploration. These provide testimony to the fact that allegations of complete suspension of nuclear activities are baseless. In the process, we also secured UNSC’s acknowledgement and recognition of Iran’s nuclear program,” he emphasized.
“We believe that Iran is fully entitled to enrichment rights according to articles of the IAEA and NPT; a major derive behind pressures on Iran was to prevent enrichment and heavy water production; they believed Iran should not have been active in these areas; however, we were active in both paths, since we were not sure that which one would lead us to nuclear fuel sooner,” Salehi concluded his speech.
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