Iran will soon present a counter-offer (via Oman) for a US nuclear proposal that it called “unacceptable”, explained Tehran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei on Monday.
The spokesperson also urged that Israel's nuclear capabilities—which Iran claimed to know of, from a large number of documents it recently obtained through espionage—were to be kept in check by international legislation: a move similar to the nuclear legislations that the US was trying to impose on Tehran.
"The US proposal is not acceptable to us. It was not the result of previous rounds of negotiations. We will present our own proposal to the other side via Oman after it is finalised. This proposal is reasonable, logical, and balanced," Baghaei stated, as per a Reuters report.
Justifying the new proposal, he stressed that any proposal would need to align with Iran's national interests, and that “its banking and trade relations with other countries will return to normal".
The upcoming proposal comes after reports previously suggested that Iran was to draft a negative response to the US proposal presented in late May. This was due to disagreements over uranium enrichment of Iranian soil and steps to lift American sanctions.
These disagreements intensified amid a confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN nuclear watchdog, which alleged that until the early 2000s, structured nuclear programs were carried out in secrecy using undeclared nuclear material, as per a separate Reuters article.
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Indeed, the IAEA report had added that that Tehran has been producing enough 60-per-cent-enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon every month, and that it now has enough material to build 10 bombs. It would take no more than two weeks to further enrich these reserves to the 90 per cent required to achieve a weapons-grade nuclear arsenal.
Although Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme was only for peaceful purposes, the IAEA and the West see it as a potential pathway for Iran building its own nuclear weapons.
Both sides have not yet fixed a date or time for the sixth iteration of the US-Iran nuclear negotiations.
