MOSCOW, August 10 (RIA Novosti) – Iran will get uranium for its nuclear program from Zimbabwe under a secret deal that bypasses a UN ban on such exports to the Middle Eastern country, a British newspaper said Saturday.
The bilateral memorandum of understanding on uranium exports was signed last year, but not reported before, Gift Chimanikire, an opposition leader who is the deputy mining minister in the outgoing Zimbabwean government, was cited as saying.
Chimanikire did not say whether the Iran has actually received any uranium from the African country. Analysts cited by The Times said Zimbabwe uranium deposits may not yet be ready to supply produce for export.
Zimbabwe’s authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, has publicly supported Iran’s nuclear program during a meeting with his then-Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2010.
Both countries are subject to international sanctions over, respectively, Mugabe regime’s dismal track record on human rights and Iran’s nuclear program, which Western countries say may be aimed at producing nuclear weapons, an accusation denied by official Tehran.
