Iran intends to go ahead with a deal reached with Turkey and Brazil for a nuclear fuel swap despite a new sanctions resolution against Tehran pending at the UN, an Iranian parliamentarian said on Saturday.
“Iran is committed to the vows that it made and wants to make them operational and will submit its letter to International Atomic Energy Agency,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee, was quoted as saying by semi-official news agency ISNA. “The Americans’ propaganda will not have any effect on Iran’s decision ... We advise those countries who want to issue this resolution against Iran not to be manipulated by America.”
Iran’s official news agency IRNA said on Friday Iran will hand an official letter to the IAEA’s chief on Monday with details of the fuel swap agreement with Brazil and Turkey.
The IAEA brokered the basis of the deal in October 2009 in talks involving Iran, France, Russia and the United States, but it soon unravelled amid Iranian demands for amendments. Turkish and Brazilian representatives at the IAEA will accompany Iran’s envoy during the meeting with the IAEA chief on Monday, a communiqué from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council published on Saturday in the daily Hambastegi said. Leaders of the three countries announced the agreement on last Monday under which Iran will send 1,200 kg of its enriched uranium stocks, reducing its supply of potential atomic bomb material, to Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a Tehran medical research reactor. But the five permanent members of the UNSC, after months of negotiations, brushed off the deal with a draft resolution on a new set of sanctions against Iran that Washington handed to the Security Council. A prominent Iranian legislator, Mohammed Reza Bahonar, had suggested Iran could scuttle the deal if the sanctions resolution is approved.