Lawmaker Says Iran Has Halted Enrichment

An influential Iranian lawmaker says his country has halted the production of enriched uranium up to 20 percent, a level that experts say is only a few technical steps from what is needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

The remarks by the lawmaker, Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, who is the deputy head of the national security and foreign policy committee in Parliament, were published on the Parliament’s official Web site, Icana, on Tuesday.

No other officials confirmed the news, but Mr. Naqavi Hosseini and his committee have recently visited nuclear sites and on Saturday were briefed by one of Iran’s main nuclear negotiators, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Mr. Naqavi Hosseini is the first lawmaker of such stature to make such a statement. If his report is true, then Iran may be edging closer to accepting one of the main demands of world powers, that it suspend the enrichment of uranium, especially up to 20 percent.

Iran says it is forced to enrich up to that level in order to produce fuel for a nuclear test reactor in Tehran, which produces medical isotopes, but the West fears that is a ruse to conceal a nuclear weapons program.

Mr. Naqavi Hosseini said on Tuesday that Iran now had enough enriched uranium to meet the reactor’s needs.

“This site has the required fuel at the moment and there is no need for more production,” he said, adding, “The issue of suspending or halting enrichment is meaningless because no production is taking place at the moment.” He also said Iran was not interested in shipping its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 20 percent abroad as part of a nuclear deal, as has been proposed in the past.

“This would mean we would put it at the disposal of others and have to beg for it later,” he said. Instead, he suggested turning the stockpile into fuel plates, under monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.