Iran Says It Will Resume Enrichment if EU Talks Fail

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator declared Saturday that Iran would resume its uranium-enrichment program if ongoing negotiations with the Europeans failed, and he warned the United States against “playing with fire.”

Speaking at a two-day international conference on nuclear technology, Hassan Rowhani said the Middle East would become more unstable if Americans asked the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran.

“The first to suffer from a crisis in the region will be America,” Rowhani said. He spoke of higher oil prices and a negative impact on Western economies but also pointed out that U.S. troops were on Iran’s borders.

Washington has accused Iran of secretly developing a nuclear weapons program and threatened to seek sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iranian authorities insist that their nuclear technology is intended for peaceful purposes only and that nuclear fuel will be used in power plants to generate electricity.

Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program last year as part of a series of voluntary confidence-building measures in its talks with Britain, France and Germany. The European Union countries are encouraging Tehran to drop the program in exchange for economic incentives, which the Iranians have vehemently opposed so far.

“Iran’s legitimate right to nuclear technology cannot be exchanged for any kind of incentives,” Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said last week.

The International Conference on Nuclear Technology and Sustainable Development was the first high-level event in Tehran to deal with Iran’s atomic program. Attended by about 60 Iranian and foreign experts and diplomats, including at least five Americans, the conference unfolded amid an increasingly tense standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“These conferences and further negotiations can help the U.S. and Iran to at least start looking at each other, rather than blindly throwing stuff at each other,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, who was among those attending.

The gathering included presentations by Iranian scientists on Iran’s uranium enrichment operations and by Iranian officials on the Islamic Republic’s legal rights and diplomacy, along with talks on nuclear technology and management.

“Our main goal is confidence-building and the exchange of views,” conference president Mahmood Vaezi said.