Iran Produces 6.5 Kg Of Uranium Enriched To 60 Percent, Can Make Nuclear Bombs

Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility. (Tasnim News Agency/Hossein Heidarpour via Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - The Iranian government announced that it had succeeded in making 6.5 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent on Tuesday, June 15 local time, bringing Iran's attention and getting closer to producing a nuclear bomb.

Government spokesman, Ali Rabiei, quoted by state media as saying Iran had also produced 108 kilograms of uranium enriched with 20 percent purity, showing faster yields than the levels required by Iranian law.

Last April, Iran said it would embark on a project to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity, a move that would bring uranium closer to 90 percent of being able to make a nuclear bomb after Tehran accused arch-foe Israel of sabotaging its main nuclear site.

Tuesday's revelations come as Tehran and Washington hold indirect talks in Vienna aimed at finding ways to revive the 2015 Nuclear Deal between Iran and world powers.

Iran's hardline parliament passed a law requiring the government to strengthen its nuclear stance last year, as part of a reaction to the former United States' withdrawal under President Donald Trump from the nuclear deal in 2018.

Trump's withdrawal prompted Iran to continue to overstep the treaty limits on its nuclear program, which is designed to complicate the development of an atomic bomb, an ambition Tehran denies.

"Under parliamentary law, the Atomic Energy Organization is supposed to produce 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium in a year. According to the latest reports, we have now produced 108 kilograms of 20 percent uranium in the last five months", Rabiei was quoted as saying by Reuters.

"In the 60 percent uranium production area, in the short time that has passed, about 6.5 kilograms have been produced", Rabiei added.

To note, the quarterly report on Iran's nuclear activities by the United Nations nuclear watchdog last month said, as of May 22 Tehran had produced 62.8 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent and 2.4 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, with subsequent levels enriched to between 2 percent and 5 percent.