Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appears to have put the kibosh on any nuclear deal with the U.S. that doesn’t allow Iran to enrich uranium for peaceful, nuclear fuel purposes. “Now, in the nuclear industry, there is one key point that functions like the master key: Uranium enrichment,” he said in a speech at the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in southern Tehran on June 4 , according to excerpts published by the Middle East Spectator Telegram channel. “Our enemies have fixated on this enrichment—they’ve put their finger exactly on this. A vast nuclear industry, without the ability to enrich uranium, is essentially useless. Why? Because for our power plants, we’d have to stretch out our hand and ask others for fuel.
“It’s like having oil in your country but being forbidden from building refineries or producing gasoline—you have crude oil, but you have to buy gasoline from someone else. And that country might sell it to you at whatever price they wish—or they might just refuse altogether, making up an excuse. That’s how they behave.”
Nuclear reactors without fuel are useless, he said. “If we can’t produce that fuel ourselves, we’d have to go begging to the U.S., and they might set dozens of conditions just to give us fuel.”
