Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in Turkey on Thursday that his country has accepted a Turkish offered to try and restart the currently stalled negotiations between Tehran and six world powers on the Islamic Republic's disputed nuclear program.
Larijani said at a news conference in Ankara that Iran was willing to resume "serious" negotiations with the six world powers, namely the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, and added: "The negotiations can yield results if they are serious and not a game."
His Turkey visit came a day after an Iranian nuclear scientist and his driver were killed in a car bomb attack in Teheran. It was the latest targeting Iranian nuclear scientists. Several other Iranian scientists have been killed or injured in recent years.
No one has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, which Iranian officials blamed on Israel and the United States. However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "categorically" denied any US involvement in the attack.
Larijani said Thursday that the latest attack showed "how weak Israel really is". He added : "If Israel thinks they can prevent our studies with four terrorist attacks, it's a very weak way of thinking. Everybody will learn that they can't stop us with such actions,"
Earlier this week, Iran announced it had begun enriching uranium at the underground Fordo nuclear plant north of the country. Iran confirmed the existence of such a plant only after western intelligence agencies identified it in September 2009.
The IAEA has also since confirmed that Iran had begun production of uranium enriched up to 20% at the Fordo plant, with spokesperson Gill Tudor stressing that "all nuclear material in the facility remains under the agency's containment and surveillance."
The latest developments come amidst escalating tensions between Iran and western nations over Teheran's nuclear program. Although Iran maintains its uranium enrichment work is aimed at producing fuel for a medical-purpose reactor, the West suspects Teheran's claims are just a cover-up for producing weapon-grade uranium.
The Islamic Republic had already survived four sets of sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council following refusal to halt its uranium enrichment. However, analysts believe that Russia and China are unlikely to support further U.N. sanctions against Tehran over the issue.
The UN sanctions on Iran include the one imposed in June 2010 over Teheran's refusal to accept a deal proposed by the UN in October 2009 to ease international concerns. Since then, the six world powers have held two rounds of talks with Iran, once in Geneva in December 2010 and again in Istanbul in January 2011. Both those negotiations failed to reach any agreements on the issue.
Recently, the United States joined Britain and Canada in slapping new sanctions on Iran to ratchet up pressure on the Islamic Republic to roll back its disputed nuclear program. The US is also planning to impose new sanctions on Iran's central bank with the intention of crippling the Islamic Republic's oil revenue. The EU is also moving to impose an oil embargo on Iran.
Iran had threatened last week to stop ship movements through the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil-shipment route, if the West imposes more sanctions over its controversial nuclear program. Following the threat, the US warned Iran that it will not tolerate any disruption to the oil traffic through the strategic waterway.
The Strait of Hormuz, located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, links the oil-producing countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to the Indian Ocean. About 40 percent of the world's tanker-borne oil passes through this strategic waterway.
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