The net result of Iran’s uranium metal factory would be to turn 20 percent enriched UF6 into another form that is not suitable for enrichment. That is a commendable nonproliferation goal. When the IAEA totals Iran’s inventories of LEU and different forms of material—such as UF6 or fuel compounds—the 20 percent material no longer in enrichable form should be inventoried as material no longer appropriate for a weapons program. However, there are a few other footnotes about Iran’s production of uranium metal that are concerning. Iran could gain industrial knowledge of how to make weapons metal that could be useful in the future. A first-generation uranium nuclear weapon uses about 12 kilograms of weapons-grade metal, according to open sources. That is a very small amount especially if one weapon per year is a goal. It can be done in a small industrial laboratory, not a factory. On the other hand, natural uranium—and depleted uranium—can be used in armor-penetrating conventional bullets. These bullets are deadly and effective in conventional engagements between tank armies,. The quantities needed for a military campaign are in the tens or hundreds of tons, as the US has demonstrated in places such as Kuwait and Kosovo. This requires a factory, but the material is not enriched at all and, thus, is completely different from a nuclear weapons program. Iran’s growing stockpile of 20 percent UF6 is far less worrisome when it is converted to a form not suitable for further enrichment. This is a nonproliferation victory.

Dr. Ravanchi is Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and his country’s highest-ranking diplomat in the United States. He helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear agreement, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018, and which President Biden has said he wants to rejoin. Iran is now in violation of some terms of the agreement but has said there is a window to revive the deal.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said the US return to the Iran nuclear deal should not be coupled with any preconditions under the new administration of Joe Biden.Answering to a question about the potential timeframe of the US return to the Iran nuclear deal, during a televised interview with Rossiya’24 news channel on Wednesday, Ulyanov replied, "I’d say that we all urgently need that the first signs of normalization will appear in February, since under the law recently passed by Iran’s Majlis (parliament), unless progress is made, as early as on February 21 Tehran is to terminate the appliance of the Additional Protocol and the Safeguards Agreement it signed with the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency), and that will dramatically reduce the chances of inspecting the state of affairs in Iran’s nuclear program."  Ulyanov recalled that Iran would hold the presidential election in June. Therefore, "the window of opportunity is very narrow," the Russian envoy to Vienna added

One of the early priorities of the new Biden administration has to be rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and they can expect to encounter stiff resistance from the Iran hawks that have been working overtime to destroy the agreement for the last five and a half years. Hard-liners have already fired off two salvos with an article in The Atlantic and an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week. The first is supposed to be a “case against the nuclear deal,” but it might as well be titled “the case against diplomacy with Iran.” Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi misrepresent what the JCPOA does, exaggerate the benefits that Iran is supposed to get (but has never actually received), and cling to an absurd maximalist demand of “zero enrichment” that Iran would never accept. It is very much the same tedious and disingenuous argument that we have heard before, and we can expect to hear it repeated many more times in the coming months. […] Assuming the other parties to the deal reciprocate by holding up their end of the bargain, Iran will ratify in 2023 the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which allows short-notice inspections of undeclared facilities in Iran and which it is now voluntarily implementing. To date, no country on earth has developed nuclear weapons under the watchful eyes of the IAEA’s inspectors who are empowered by the access that the Additional Protocol affords them.