Tehran on Friday invited Western nations to participate in the construction of nuclear power plants across Iran, in the latest round of the country reiterating its tough stance on a disputed nuclear issue. The invitation would test the West's "good will" and restore Iran's trust in the West, shaken after the years of the country's suspension of nuclear activities, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said.
It comes after Iran announced on Monday an international bid for the building of two more nuclear power plants, despite international pressures to curb its controversial program.
Tehran says the plants would be light-water reactors, each with the capacity to generate up to 1,600 megawatts of electricity and would cost up to US$1.7 billion (€1.25 billion) and take up to 11 years to construct. It was not immediately known if there were responses to the bid.
"The international tender for construction of the two nuclear power plants ... is a good yardstick to test the Westerners' good will," Aghazadeh told the official IRNA news agency but did not mention any specific country.
Aghazadeh said that Iran will never again stop uranium enrichment and vowed that Tehran will continue to work around the clock to install more centrifuges at its underground enrichment plant in Natanz, until all 50,000 planned centrifuges are in place, IRNA reported.
Aghazadeh claimed that Iran showed "good will" when it suspended uranium enrichment in 2003 for three years, but later lost trust in Western nations after learning they were "seeking a permanent halt to Iran's nuclear activities" rather than guarantees the program would not be diverted to weapons making. "Therefore, we won't repeat this experience," he said of the possibility of another suspension.