Iran will abandon an atomic fuel swap plan brokered by Turkey and Brazil if the United States imposes new sanctions on Tehran, Iran's parliament speaker said on Sunday. Leaders of Iran, Brazil and Turkey announced the new agreement last Monday under which Iran will send 1,200 kilo of its enriched uranium stocks - reducing its supply of potential atomic bomb material- to Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a Tehran medical research reactor. In remarks broadcast on state-owned IRIB, Ali Larijani said Tehran could also review its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “If the Americans want to seek adventure, whether in the UN Security Council or in (the US) Congress, all the efforts of Turkey and Brazil will be in vain and this path will be abandoned,” said Larijani, an influential conservative. “In this situation parliament will make a different decision over Iran's cooperation with the IAEA.” Parliament has the power to oblige the government to change its cooperation with the IAEA, as it did in 2006 after the Vienna-based agency voted to report Iran to the Security Council. A day earlier, another senior lawmaker said Tehran planned to go ahead with the deal reached with Turkey and Brazil despite a new sanctions resolution pending at the United Nations. Iran's official news agency IRNA said Friday Iran will hand an official letter to the IAEA on Monday with details of the agreement with Brazil and Turkey. The IAEA brokered the basis of the deal last October in talks involving Iran, France, Russia and the United States but it soon unravelled amid Iranian demands for amendments. Larijani was a critic of that plan. Iran offers to help fight oil spill Plugging the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is no great challenge compared to what Iran has dealt with in the past, an official at Iran's drilling company said on Sunday. A long-standing adversary of the United States, Iran has offered to help fight the spill - a gesture unlikely to be taken up by Washington. Mehran Alinejad, the head of special drilling operations at the National Iranian Drilling Co., said Iran had successfully dealt with huge oil leaks in the past, particularly when rigs were bombed during a war with Iraq in the 1980s. “Iranian technical teams have had major achievements in oil well capping compared with which the Gulf of Mexico oil rig is no feat,” he told IRNA news agency. Alinejad repeated Iran's offer of help.
