Middle East, Nuclear Weapon | featured news

Iran risks increased international sanctions for failing to engage in talks on its nuclear ambitions.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's parliament will review the Islamic republic's relations with countries that voted against its nuclear activities at the International Atomic Energy Agency last week, the speaker said on Thursday.

Iran's Cabinet has OK'd building 10 more uranium enrichment plants, the state news agency says, further defying calls to halt nuclear fuel production.

Iran could consider sending its low-enriched uranium abroad, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, signaling a possible softening of its opposition to a plan aimed at easing Western concern over its nuclear ambitions.

Iran's belated revelation of a second uranium enrichment site raises concern about possible further secret nuclear sites in the country, according to a U.N. nuclear watchdog report on Monday obtained by Reuters.

A senior Iranian politician said Saturday the country would not ship low-enriched uranium out of the country, which is a major part of a pending nuclear deal between Iran and international powers, according to semiofficial state media.

Iran is ready for another round of talks on a U.N.-drafted nuclear fuel proposal, Tehran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday. "We are ready for the next round of technical discussions in Vienna at the IAEA headquarters," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Reuters.

Iran did not reject the United Nations plan outright, but its counterproposal could draw out the negotiations.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that "some countries" had offered to provide Iran with uranium enriched to 20 percent for use as nuclear fuel, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog on Sunday described a "shifting of gears" in the controversy over Iran's nuclear program ...