Israeli officials: The world is allowing Iran to keep enrichment centrifuges
Nine years after the UN Security Council passed a binding resolution calling on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, the world powers – according to reports emerging from the nuclear talks in Geneva – are on the verge of allowing it to retain some 6,500 centrifuges.
“The trajectory is worrying,” one Israeli official said in an understatement, adding that the reports of the emerging deal are not a surprise to Jerusalem, which he said has known of the details for some time, even though the US admitted recently that it has left Israel out of the loop in recent months.
“In the beginning, the position of the world powers was that Iran should have no centrifuges,” the official said, referring to 2006 and the first of six UN Security Council resolutions on the matter.
“Then, in the interim agreement (2013), they [the P5+1] accepted the concept of some sort of symbolic enrichment, to allow the Iranians to save face.