![\"Biden-says-Iranian-enrichment-to-60%-unhelpful-but-glad-about-talks-rapidnews\"](\"https:\/\/dailyrapidnews.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Biden-says-Iranian-enrichment-to-60-unhelpful-but-glad-about-talks-rapidnews.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUS\u00a0President Joe Biden on Friday called Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60% purity unhelpful but said he is pleased Tehran is still in indirect talks with Washington about both countries resuming compliance with the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.<\/p>\n
Iran on Friday said it had begun enriching uranium to 60%, its highest level ever and a step closer to the 90% that is weapons grade, at its Natanz plant, where an explosion occurred earlier this week that Tehran blamed on Israel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“We do not support and do not think it’s at all helpful that Iran is saying it’s going to move to enrich to 60 percent,” Biden told reporters in Washington during a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.<\/p>\n
“We are, though, nonetheless pleased that Iran has continued to agree to engage in discussions – indirect discussions – with us and with our partners on how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the (nuclear deal) … without us making concessions that we are just not willing to make,” Biden added.<\/p>\n
Iran had in recent months already raised enrichment to 20% purity, a level at which uranium is considered to be highly enriched and a significant step toward weapons grade.<\/p>\n
A 2015 deal with world powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return for the lifting of sanctions had capped the level of purity at 3.67%. Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
“We are producing about 9 grams of 60% enriched uranium an hour,” Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told state television.<\/p>\n
“But we have to work on arrangements … to drop it to 5 grams per hour. But then we will simultaneously produce 20% (uranium),” Salehi said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said Iranian scientists had successfully started enriching 60% uranium at 40 minutes past midnight.<\/p>\n
“The will of the Iranian nation makes miracles that thwart any conspiracy,” Qalibaf wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
In Vienna, a spokesman for the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA declined to comment on the Iranian statements about 60% enrichment.<\/p>\n
Asked if Iran’s move was a sign that Tehran is not serious about returning to the nuclear deal, Biden replied: “The discussions are under way. I think it’s premature to make a judgment as to what the outcome will be. But we are still talking.”<\/p>\n
Iran and global powers are meeting in Vienna to try to rescue the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by former U.S. President Donald Trump three years ago – an effort potentially complicated by Tehran’s decision to ramp up uranium enrichment.<\/p>\n
The talks will carry on for several days before breaking so that Iranian and US\u00a0officials can return home for consultations, a European Union official said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“We have this (Iranian) decision to go for 60% enrichment.<\/p>\n
Obviously this is not making the negotiation easier,” the EU official told reporters, calling what happened at Natanz “deliberate sabotage”.<\/p>\n
Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s chief negotiator at the talks, said on Tuesday that Iran would activate 1,000 advanced centrifuge machines at Natanz.<\/p>\n
Multiple Israeli media outlets have quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying the country’s Mossad spy service carried out the sabotage operation at the Natanz complex. Israel – widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with a nuclear arsenal – has not formally commented on the incident.<\/p>\n
Israel will do “whatever it takes” to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said on Friday.<\/p>\n