Iranian MP Stresses Parliament’s Close Watch on N. Talks
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A prominent Iranian lawmaker said the country’s legislature keeps a close watch on the course of nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the six major world powers.
Speaking in a cultural ceremony in Iran’s southwestern city of Kazeroun on Saturday, Parliament’s Vice-Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar reiterated that the negotiations over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program are under the lawmakers’ constant supervision.
Bahonar, at the same time, emphasized the necessity for giving whatever support to the country’s nuclear negotiators, who are engaged in painstaking talks with the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany).
On November 24, 2013, Iran and the Group 5+1 (also known as P5+1 or E3+3) signed a six-month deal on Tehran’s nuclear program in Geneva after several rounds of tight negotiations.
Based on the interim deal (the Joint Plan of Action), the world powers agreed to suspend some non-essential sanctions and to impose no new nuclear-related bans in return for Tehran's decision to suspend its 20% enrichment for a period of six months.
The breakthrough deal, which has come into effect since January 20, stipulates that over the course of six months, Iran and the six countries will draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal which will lead to a lifting of the whole sanctions on Iran.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Bahonar underlined the country’s significant progress in the nuclear field, and explained that peaceful nuclear technology has now become indigenized in Iran thanks to the considerable efforts made by the country’s nuclear scientists.
He went on to say that the local experts have also succeeded to store the supply fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor that could run the facility for several years.
Iran uses the Tehran Research Reactor, a light-water nuclear reactor given to Iran by the US in 1967, to produce radio istotopes for medical and agricultural purposes.
However, when the fuel supplies for the reactor were running low, the western countries refused to sell Iran the 20-percent enriched plates, causing the country to run out of fuel shortly in 2011.
Iran has since stated it would make the fuel itself, despite technical hurdles that prevent all but a few countries in the world today from manufacturing such fuel.
