Iran is tomorrow to announce details of a new cut to its commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal in response to sweeping US sanctions, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported yesterday.
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi is to hold a news conference to set out the details of Iran’s third cut to its nuclear commitments since May, it said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday said that the steps included abandoning all limits set by the 2015 deal to Iran’s nuclear research and development.
Photo: AFP / Iranian Presidential Office
He spoke of “expansions in the field of research and development, centrifuges, different types of new centrifuges and whatever we need for enrichment,” but did not elaborate.
Iran and three European countries — Britain, France and Germany — have been engaged in talks to try to save the nuclear deal that has been unraveling since US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in May last year and unilaterally reimposed sanctions.
Rouhani earlier on Wednesday told a Cabinet meeting: “I don’t think that ... we will reach a deal.”
However, he had also said that Tehran and the European powers had been getting closer to an agreement.
“If we had 20 issues of disagreement with the Europeans in the past, today there are three issues,” he said.
Iran has expressed mounting frustration at Europe’s failure to offset the effect of renewed US sanctions in return for its continued compliance with the agreement.
It had already hit back twice with countermeasures in response to the US withdrawal from the deal.
On July 1, Iran said that it had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to beyond the 300kg maximum set by the agreement. A week later, it announced it had exceeded a 3.67 percent cap on the purity of its uranium stocks.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday last week said that Iran’s uranium stockpile stood at about 360kg and that just more than 10 percent of it was enriched to 4.5 percent.
Rouhani has stressed that the countermeasures are all readily reversible if the remaining parties to the deal honor their undertakings to provide sanctions relief.
A senior US official on Wednesday ruled out any exemptions from Iran sanctions to permit a French-proposed credit line, which Tehran says could bring it back to full compliance with the deal.
“We can’t make it any more clear that we are committed to this campaign of maximum pressure and we are not looking to grant any exceptions or waivers,” US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told reporters.
On Wednesday, the US issued its third set of sanctions on Iran in less than a week.
In the latest salvo, the US Department of the Treasury blacklisted a shipping network of 16 entities, 10 people and 11 vessels that it said was selling oil on behalf of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.
The network sold more than US$500 million of oil this spring, mostly to Syria, benefiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and militant Lebanese allies Hezbollah, the department said.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS