While President Ebrahim Raisi is in Syria, classified information obtained shows Tehran is procuring uranium from phosphate mines in Syria to make yellowcake.
According to the secret documents received by Iran International, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) had asked the government to let the agency import 800,000 tons of phosphate from the mines under the Islamic Republic’s control in Syria without paying the share of the administration.
One of the documents is a letter issued in January by Mojtaba Hosseinipour, a deputy at the president’s office, addressing Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs Ehsan Khandozi and Reza Fatemi Amin, the former Minister of Industry, Mines and Business who was sacked this week, as well as former head of Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization Masoud Mirkazemi and Mohammad Dehghan, Raisi’s deputy in legal matters.
In the letter, the office of the president has asked the officials to decide whether or not they can give the green light to the nuclear agency for “the annual purchase of phosphates from Syria without paying the government’s share.”
In 2017, Tehran and Damascus signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in a phosphate mine in Syria’s Al-Sharqiya. Syria is among the world’s largest exporters of the rock phosphate, a raw material used in the production of phosphatic fertilizers. The main use of phosphate is production of fertilizers, but the rock is also an unconventional source to extract uranium, explained in another document attached to the letter.
While EU sanctions on Syria do not explicitly prohibit phosphate imports, they do ban deals with the Syrian minister of oil and mineral resources, who is in charge of phosphates. Cheap Syrian phosphate exports to Europe have boomed in recent years, The Guardian reported in January 2022, noting that European farmers are dependent on phosphate fertilizers. Anyhow, it seems that the Islamic Republic has found another way around sanctions to advance its nuclear program.
Another letter included in the bundle of documents is by the head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, who asked Raisi’s first deputy Mohammad Mokhber to allow the purchase of the product from Syria.
Source » iranintl