Iran to Receive $2.8bln, Convert Oxidized Uranium
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – During a 4-month period of extended nuclear talks between Tehran and six world powers, $2.8 billion of frozen Iranian funds will be released while Iran will convert its previously oxidized uranium into fuel for Tehran research reactor, an Iranian diplomat said.
Speaking to reporters in the early hours of Saturday in Vienna, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi announced that Tehran will be allowed to access a total of $2.8 billion of its frozen funds in six tranches within the next four months.
“Four $500-million and two $400-million tranches will be paid to Iran every three weeks beginning August 1," Araqchi, also a senior Iranian negotiator, told reporters.
After nearly three weeks of intensive diplomatic negotiations in the Austrian capital of Vienna that began on July 2, Iran and the group of six world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) agreed to keep holding talks on Tehran’s nuclear program for four more months.
The parties decided to extend the nuclear talks until November 24 in the hope of clinching a final deal to resolve the decade-long standoff on Iran’s nuclear energy program.
The four-month extension of the talks will begin on July 21.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Araqchi made it clear that Iran has agreed to “convert its 20-percent-enriched uranium, which it had already oxidized during the first 6 months of the Geneva deal, into fuel for the Tehran research reactor.”
“During four months (of extended talks), only 25 kilograms (of enriched uranium) will be converted to fuel, whereas the surplus will be converted into fuel in the following months according to our own plan,” he explained.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement released in Vienna on Saturday that "Iran will not get any more money during these four months than it did during the last six months, and the vast majority of its frozen oil revenues will remain inaccessible."
"We will continue to vigorously enforce the sanctions that remain in place," he noted.
Iran and the sextet on November 24, 2013, signed an interim nuclear deal in the Swiss city of Geneva. The breakthrough agreement (the Joint Plan of Action), which came into effect on January 20, had given the parties six months to draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal.