Iran Says Time Running Out for Nuclear Deal

A week before nuclear talks resume with outside powers, a senior Iranian official was quoted on Wednesday as saying time was running out for a proposal dating to 2009 for Tehran to send nuclear material abroad in return for enriched uranium to fuel a research reactor, New York Times reports.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear supervisory body, was speaking to journalists in Paris on Tuesday and excerpts from his remarks were published by the official IRNA news agency on Wednesday.

His comments play into a much broader debate about Iran’s nuclear intentions. Teheran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes permitted under international agreements to which it has long been a signatory. But Western countries fear Tehran is seeking to build nuclear weapons that would upset the regional power balance. It was not clear whether Mr. Soltanieh intended his remarks as an overture before the negotiations with outside powers restart.

The proposal for Iran to send material abroad in return for 20 percent enriched uranium to be used in a research reactor in Tehran first surfaced in 2009, but Iran subsequently retreated from the tentative agreement. Since then, Iran has announced that it is able to purify uranium to the level of 20 percent required for the research reactor — only a part of Iran’s wider program. Iranian officials have said in recent days that its scientists would be able manufacture fuel rods for the Tehran reactor later this year.

“Time is moving against the negotiating side,” Mr. Soltanieh said, referring to the group of countries — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — that, along with the European Union, are set to resume talks with Iranian negotiators in Istanbul on Jan. 21 following inconclusive negotiations in Geneva in December. “It should use the chance at the earliest.”