Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog that it plans to enrich uranium to 20% purity, which it received ahead of a 2015 agreement at its Fordo site buried inside a mountain.
The move comes in the wake of recent announcements by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it plans to further violate the deal, which calls for Washington to withdraw from the agreement and for Washington to sue the United States. Violations began in 2019 in exchange for enforcing sanctions.
The move was mentioned in a law passed by Iran’s parliament in response to the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel. Such a move by Iran could complicate US President-elect Joe Biden’s efforts to rejoin the deal.
“This is an additional blow,” a Vienna-based diplomat told AFP.
“Iran has informed the agency that it intends to produce up to 20 percent less enriched uranium at its Fordo Fuel Enrichment plant, in compliance with a legislation recently passed by the country’s parliament,” the IAEA said. In a statement.
The IAEA report to member states, obtained by Reuters earlier on Friday, used similar terms to describe a letter written by Iran to the IAEA on December 31.
The IAEA statement said in a letter to the agency to Iran … it did not say when the prosperity activity would take place.
The Fordo was built inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from aerial bombardment, and the 2015 deal does not allow prosperity there. Iran is already enriching at Fordo with IR-1 centrifuges of PEI.
Iran has violated the deal’s purity threshold of 3.67% to enrich uranium, but so far it has only gone up to 4.5%, which is 20% lower than the weapons grade obtained before the deal and 90%. .
The main purpose of the deal was to extend the time required for Iran to build enough physical material for a nuclear bomb, if it had chosen to do so for at least two to three months at least a year. Also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran had a secret, integrated nuclear weapons program that it suspended in 2003. Iran denies it ever was.
Biden, who took office on January 20, has indicated that Washington will rejoin Washington’s so-called joint comprehensive plan aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program.
The deal has been in place since President Donald Trump dramatically backed out in May 2018 and imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Massey has said that the U.S. The change of administration in means that there is a “last window” for progress which “should not be in vain”.
With Reuters and the agency France-Press
