Iranian parliament chairman Ali Larijani said on Wednesday that ongoing nuclear talks between his country and world powers in Geneva should not be disrupted by a "trivial issue" - such as the number of nuclear centrifuges left in the Islamic regime by a deal.
Iran in July claimed it "needs" 19 times more nuclear centrifuges than the number offered by world powers, demanding 190,000 centrifuges. Experts have warned Iran must be stripped of its centrifuges, for if left with its current 19,000 centrifuges it would have sudden breakout capacity of six to seven weeks in which it could enrich uranium quickly and achieve a nuclear bomb.
Larjiani, who was quoted by Walla!, has previously called Israel a "cancer" and admitted in July during Hamas's terror war to try and destroy Israel that Iran provided the terrorists with rocket technology.
The Iranian official also hinted at a type of blackmail scheme his country is leveraging on world powers, saying that a nuclear deal would build trust between Iran and the American-led coalition against Islamic State (ISIS), in a subtle hint of military cooperation that Iran has previously denied.
US Secretary of State John Kerry last month left the door open to such cooperation, after first not inviting Iran to a coalition meeting and then saying in an interview that he would be open to military cooperation.
Iran spy chief versus the Mossad
The statements amid the ongoing talks that are approaching a November 24 deadline come the same Wednesday a senior American official said "we don't know if we'll succeed in reaching an agreement, it's very possible that we won't."
The official said that disagreements had lessened, reports Walla!, but "significant gaps" still remain about the core issue of uranium enrichment, a process for creating nuclear bombs.
That assessment came after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday said Tehran was “certain” it would reach an accord with the West over its nuclear effort before the next deadline. America extended a previous deadline to the current November date, with indications it may do the same again.
Just last Monday a mysterious explosion rocked Iran's secret Parchin nuclear facility, with an in-depth report by Channel 2 indicating the blast was a chemical explosion and not ammunition accident as Iran had claimed. The report added that a transport company with a nuclear explosion on its logo may have been sabotaged as it brought dangerous materials into the facility.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alawi on Tuesday made comments cited in the Iranian offical Fars News Agency saying "some (spying) services like Mossad, the MI6 and the CIA...act directly and leave negative effects. Our nuclear, defense and missile industries and advanced technologies are the arenas in which they seek to gain intelligence and carry out sabotage operations."