Iran wants nuclear fuel guarantees

Iran's envoy to the UN atomic watchdog said yesterday that Tehran wants a guaranteed supply of fuel for a research reactor as a military chief warned that any attack on its nuclear sites would be crushed.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reiterated that Tehran is ready for further talks on supplying fuel for the internationally supervised reactor in the capital.

"The main issue is how to get a guarantee for the timely supply of fuel which Iran needs," Mr Soltanieh was quoted as saying by Isna news agency.

"We are ready to have negotiations with a positive approach, but because of lack of confidence with the West, we need to have those guarantees."

He spoke days after the Islamic republic rejected a deal brokered by the IAEA which proposed that Tehran send most of its stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France for conversion into fuel for the research reactor.

Iran dismissed the deal but said it was ready for a simultaneous exchange inside the country of its LEU for nuclear fuel supplied by the West.

Western powers strongly back the IAEA-drafted deal as they fear Iran could further enrich its LEU for use in making atomic weapons, a charge vociferously denied by Tehran.

Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of the controversy over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Enriched uranium can be used to power reactors, but in purer form it can also be used in the fissile core of an atomic weapon.

Mr Soltanieh said that under IAEA rules, member states can enrich uranium to any level.

"There is no limit to enrichment for members of the IAEA. There is no ceiling," he said. "The member countries are, however, required to declare to the agency their enrichment levels and the agency has to verify it."

He clarified that Iran's main enrichment plant in the central city of Natanz was enriching uranium up to five percent purity.

Iran is building a second enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom. Its disclosure in September triggered outrage in the West, prompting world powers to threaten fresh sanctions if Tehran did not come clean on its atomic project.

Tehran is already under three sets of UN sanctions for enriching uranium at Natanz.

Meanwhile a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards said yesterday that its air defences would annihilate Israeli warplanes if they attacked.

He spoke at the start of five days of manoeuvres aimed at honing a response to any assault on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Their F-15 and F-16 fighters will be trapped by our air defence forces and will be annihilated," Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guards' air wing, told the Fars news agency.

"Even if their planes escape and land at the bases from which they took off, their bases will be struck by our destructive surface-to-surface missiles."