TEHRAN, Iran — Iran set a one-month deadline Saturday for the West to accept its counterproposal to a U.N.-drafted nuclear plan and warned that otherwise it will produce reactor fuel at a higher level of enrichment on its own.
The warning was a show of defiance and a hardening of Iran’s stance over its nuclear program, which the West fears masks an effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran insists its program is only for peaceful purposes, such as electricity production, and says it has no intention of making a bomb.
Iran dismissed an end-of- 2009 deadline imposed by the Obama administration and its international partners to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap most of its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The deal would reduce Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, limiting — at least for the moment — its capability to make nuclear weapons.
