The chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has announced that his nation has discovered an unexpected new source of uranium, raising doubts about earlier assessments that Iran had insufficient supply of uranium to fuel its nuclear program.

Reuters reported Saturday:

“I cannot announce (the level of) Iran’s uranium mine reserves. The important thing is that before aerial prospecting for uranium ores we were not too optimistic, but the new discoveries have made us confident about our reserves,” Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. …

A report published in 2013 by U.S. think-tanks Carnegie Endowment and the Federation of American Scientists said the scarcity and low quality of Iran’s uranium resources compelled it “to rely on external sources of natural and processed uranium”.

It added: “Despite the Iranian leadership’s assertions to the contrary, Iran’s estimated uranium endowments are nowhere near sufficient to supply its planned nuclear program.”

Salehi’s announcement comes two days after the United States Senate blocked an up or down vote on the nuclear deal with Iran.

In July, Ely Karmon, a senior research scholar at Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, noted that the international community had failed to rid Syria of its chemical weapons and asked, “If this is the record of the international community in dismantling and monitoring the chemical and nuclear facilities in Syria, how exactly it will do better in monitoring the vast Iranian nuclear infrastructure?”

[Photo: ODN / YouTube ]