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Iran has announced that it will continue to violate the international nuclear agreement. The country wants to significantly expand its uranium enrichment. This would significantly exceed the threshold set in the 2015 agreement.
According to the UN nuclear regulator, IAEA, Iran has officially announced its intention to clearly violate the international nuclear agreement. Tehran has announced that it will enrich uranium to a purity of up to 20 percent and thus significantly exceed the threshold set in the 2015 agreement, a spokesman for the authority said.
Therefore, the processing must take place at the Fordow underground facility. This should comply with a law recently passed by parliament. The law requires the production and storage of “at least 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium per year.” Tehran did not announce when enrichment activity should start.
Enrichment up to 4.5 percent
The Russian representative to the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, had previously reported on Iran’s plans on Twitter, citing IAEA chief Rafael Grossi. A diplomat spoke of “another blow” to the nuclear deal.
The 2015 nuclear pact stipulates that Iran can enrich uranium to a maximum of 3.67 percent. The goal of the agreement is to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. However, US President Donald Trump unilaterally rescinded the agreement in May 2018 and put new sanctions into effect against the Tehran regime. Starting in 2019, Iran ignored its original obligations and enriched uranium to 4.5 percent. Wearable uranium must be enriched by up to 90 percent.
Expert extinguishes hopes
The other signatories to the agreement – China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain – have high hopes for future US President Joe Biden. The Democrat had already announced that he wanted to save the pact. However, the director of the renowned Sweden-based Sipri Peace Research Institute, Dan Smith, dashed hopes that Biden would be a mediator.
“A successful resumption of the deal could cost more political capital than Biden is willing to invest,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. In Iran, too, the mood tilted because the deal didn’t deliver what it had promised, Smith said. Iran was not fully tied to world trade, nor did international investors dare to enter the country in large numbers.
Threats against the US
In Iran, meanwhile, tensions with the United States flared further. During a visit to the strategically important island of Abu Musa in the Gulf, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, promised to react to every “enemy action”. A year after the deadly US drone attack on Iranian General Kassem Soleimani, Salami secured the country’s military strength and threatened a “decisive and powerful blow”.
