Iran plans to enrich uranium up to 20 percent at its underground Fordo nuclear facility, international inspectors said yesterday, pushing its program a technical step away from weapons-grade levels as it increases pressure on the West over its tattered atomic deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acknowledged that Iran had informed its inspectors of the decision after news leaked on Friday.
The move comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the administration of US President Donald Trump, who in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from Tehran’s nuclear deal. That set in motion an escalating series of incidents capped by a US drone strike killing a top Iranian general in Baghdad a year ago, with the anniversary of the death today linked to possible retaliation by Iran.
Photo: AP
The decision comes after the Iranian Parliament passed a bill, later approved by a constitutional watchdog, aimed at hiking enrichment to pressure Europe into providing sanctions relief.
It also serves as pressure ahead of the inauguration of US president-elect Joe Biden, who has said he is willing to re-enter the nuclear deal.
“Iran has informed the agency that in order to comply with a legal act recently passed by the country’s parliament, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran intends to produce low-enriched uranium ... up to 20 percent at the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant,” the IAEA said in a statement.
Iran did not say when it planned to boost enrichment, though the agency “has inspectors present in Iran on a 24/7 basis and they have regular access to Fordo,” it said.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to the Vienna-based IAEA, wrote on Twitter on Friday that Tehran planned to resume enrichment up to 20 percent after a Wall Street Journal journalist broke the news.
The Islamic Republic News Agency later reported Ulyanov’s comments, linking the decision to the parliament bill aimed at restarting higher enrichment at Fordo.
It also offered no timeframe for starting the higher enrichment.
Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the UN, called the letter “self-explanatory,” but declined to answer questions about when the 20 percent enrichment would begin.
Since the deal’s collapse, Iran has resumed enrichment at Fordo, near the city of Qom, about 90km southwest of Tehran.
Shielded by the mountains, Fordo is ringed by anti-aircraft guns and other fortifications. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead US officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to limit its enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. The accord also called for Fordo to be turned into a research-and-development facility.
As of now, Iran is enriching uranium up to 4.5 percent, in violation of the accord’s limit of 3.67 percent.
Experts say that Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium stockpiled for at least two nuclear weapons, if it chose to pursue them.
Iran says that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran separately has begun construction on a new site at Fordo, according to satellite photographs obtained last month by The Associated Press.
Iran’s announcement coincides with the anniversary of the US drone striking Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last year.
Iran retaliated by launching a ballistic missile strike injuring dozens of US troops in Iraq.
Tehran also accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet that night, killing all 176 people onboard.
As the anniversary approached, the US has sent B-52 bombers over the region and sent a nuclear-powered submarine into the Persian Gulf.
On Thursday, sailors discovered a limpet mine on a tanker in the Persian Gulf off Iraq near the Iranian border as it prepared to transfer fuel to another tanker owned by a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
No one has claimed responsibility for the mining, though it comes after a series of similar attacks in 2019 that the US Navy blamed on Iran.
Tehran denied being involved.
In November, an Iranian scientist who founded the country’s military nuclear program two decades earlier was killed in an attack Tehran blames on Israel.
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