Iran’s fresh N-threat: Will restart centrifuges, ramp up enrichment

GENEVA/DUBAI, July 8 

Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and sharply step up its enrichment of uranium to 20% purity as its next potential big moves away from a 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned last year.

The threats, made by the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear agency, would go far beyond the small steps Iran has taken in the past week to nudge its stocks of fissile material just beyond limits in the nuclear pact.

That could raise serious questions about whether the agreement, intended to block Iran from making a nuclear weapon, is still viable.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, confirmed an announcement that Tehran had enriched uranium beyond the 3.67% purity that the deal allows, passing 4.5%, according to the student’s news agency ISNA. 

Iran has said it will take another, third step away from the deal within 60 days but has so far held back from formally announcing what that next step would entail.

Kamalvandi said the authorities were discussing options that included the prospect of enriching uranium to 20% purity or beyond, and restarting centrifuges that were dismantled as one of the deal’s core aims. “There is the 20% option and there are options even higher than that but each in its own place,” Kamalvandi said. Restarting IR-2 and IR-2 M centrifuges was an option, he said.

Such threats will put new pressure on European countries, which insist Iran must continue to comply with the agreement even though the US is no longer doing so.

Enriching uranium up to 20% purity would be a dramatic move, since that was the level Iran had achieved before the deal was put in place. It is considered an important intermediate stage on the path to obtaining the 90% pure fissile uranium needed to make a bomb.

One of the main achievements of the deal was Iran’s agreement to dismantle its advanced IR-2M centrifuges, which are used to purify uranium. Iran had 1,000 of them installed at its large enrichment site at Natanz before the deal was reached.

Under the deal, it is allowed to operate only up to two for mechanical testing.

Still, the threatened measures also appear intended to be sufficiently ambiguous to hold back from fully repudiating the deal. Kamalvandi did not specify how much uranium Iran might purify to the higher level, nor how many centrifuges it would consider restarting. He did not mention other more advanced centrifuges, including the most advanced, the IR-8.

The nuclear diplomacy is only one aspect of a wider confrontation between Washington and Tehran that has threatened to spiral into open conflict since the US tightened sanctions on Iran from the start of May. 

The deal guaranteed Iran access to world trade in return for accepting curbs on its nuclear programme. Iran says the deal allows it to respond to the US breach by reducing its compliance, and it will do so every 60 days. — Reuters

Surpasses uranium enrichment Limit

• The UN's nuclear watchdog confirmed on Monday that Iran has enriched uranium at a level higher than the limit set in a 2015 international pact. The IAEA “verified that Iran is enriching uranium above 3.67 per cent U-235”
• The announcement came hours after Tehran said it had exceeded the cap and reached 4.5 per cent enrichment in response to the US withdrawing from the deal. On May 8, Iran announced that it no longer considered itself bound to keep to limits 
• Iranian officials have also hinted they may go up to 5 per cent, the level needed to produce fuel for Iran’s only nuclear power station at Bushehr. The JCPOA permitted Iran to only enrich uranium to the level of 3.67 per cent 
• The move came a year after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark accord between world powers and Tehran, which says it has lost patience with perceived inaction by the remaining European partners