Iran and the P5+1 powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) agreed last week in Lausanne, Switzerland, a framework to a comprehensive deal, paving the way for negotiations to begin over the technical details of a potential accord, which must be agreed by June 30.
However, both sides have since emphasised differing aspects of the nascent deal, indicating that a final agreement remains far off.
According to the Iranian FARS news agency, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif, who negotiated the Lausanne agreement, and atomic agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi briefed Iranian parliamentarians on last week’s deal outline behind closed doors.
The FARS report quoted Javad Karimi Qoddousi, a member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, as saying following the closed-door session at the Iranian parliament: “The AEOI chief and the Foreign Minister presented hopeful remarks about nuclear technology R&D which, they said, have been agreed upon during the talks (with the six world powers), and informed that gas will be injected into IR8 (centrifuge machines) with the start of the (implementation of the) agreement.”
At a press conference in Persian last week in Lausanne presenting the agreement, Zarif asserted that Iran, under the deal, has the right to continue working on more advanced IR-8 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium 20 times faster than the IR-1 centrifuges it currently uses. “Some said Iran can have no R&D, but we now have the right to develop IR-8, which has 20x output of IR-1,” he claimed.
The US claims the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran requires that those centrifuges be put in storage and not used.
The IR-8 centrifuge is reported to enrich uranium up to 20 times faster than the IR-1 model currently being used. Use of the IR-8 centrifuge would appear to wholly contradict the United States’s understanding of last week’s preliminary agreement, indicating that confusion remains between the two sides over the terms of an eventual accord.
The US State Department clearly stated after last week’s agreement that “Iran will not use its IR-2, IR-4, IR-5, IR-6, or IR-8 models to produce enriched uranium for at least ten years.”