United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Israel next month, sources involved in the matter told Israel Hayom Wednesday.
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It is not yet clear when the visit will take place, but it "will happen soon," the sources said.
The news comes against the backdrop of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's efforts to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, with the possibility of negotiations taking place in Jerusalem arising recently. The US, as the world's top superpower, is involved in its allies' efforts to end the war and deter Russia.
In addition, officials are expected to discuss the Iranian nuclear deal, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday were in the final stages.
Just last week, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met with Blinken in Latvia. The two discussed the war in Ukraine and the nuclear agreement, which Israel vehemently opposes.
Meanwhile, a report by the UN nuclear watchdog on Wednesday showed that Iran has defied Western powers by converting some of its uranium enriched to near weapons-grade into a form less easily recovered, diluted, and shipped out of the country.
The move is unlikely to wreck indirect talks between Iran and the United States to revive the 2015 nuclear deal – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – but it will make it harder to implement any resulting agreement to return to the limits on Tehran's stock of enriched uranium.
US allies France, Britain, and Germany, which are involved in the talks, said as much in a joint statement issued last Tuesday in which they demanded that Iran not carry out the work.
"We strongly urge Iran to avoid undertaking any new escalations and in particular, call upon Iran to immediately cease all activity related to the conversion of highly enriched uranium, which will have practical implications for returning to JCPOA limits," they said in the statement.
The agreement, which diplomats say is nearing completion, would require the Islamist Republic to get rid of its stock of uranium enriched above the deal's limit of 3.67% purity. Its most highly enriched uranium is roughly 60%, close to 90% of weapons-grade, of which it has about 33 kilograms (73 pounds).
Until its latest move outlined in last Thursday's International Atomic Energy Agency report to member states, Iran's stock of uranium enriched to up to 60% was all in the form of uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for uranium-enriching centrifuges. Uranium hexafluoride can easily be diluted and transported, a process delegates at the talks have been discussing for months.
The confidential report, seen by Reuters and summarized in a short statement by the IAEA, said that between March 6 and March 9 the IAEA verified that Iran had converted 2.1 kilograms (4.6 pounds) of its up to 60% uranium into 1.7 kilograms (3.8 pounds) in a different form enriched to the same level suitable for making small "targets" for irradiation.
Irradiating such targets produces molybdenum-99, a medical isotope that produces another one widely used in medical diagnostic imaging. What remains of the target includes highly enriched uranium in a form that must be processed to recover it.
On March 11 and 13, the IAEA verified Iran had produced 32 targets containing a total of 186.7 grams (6.6 ounces) of uranium enriched up to 60%, the report said, adding that Tehran later declared they had all been irradiated.
The agency then verified on March 15 that the regime had produced another batch of 56 targets containing a total of 329 grams (11.6 ounces) of uranium enriched to the same level, the report said.
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