WASHINGTON – Iran’s decision to dramatically increase uranium enrichment is intended to strengthen its hand in future negotiations with President-elect Joe Biden, say experts, European diplomats and former US officials.
The move reflects Iran’s growing desperation to lift US economic sanctions, but runs the risk of provoking a confrontation with Israel or the US during President Donald Trump’s last weeks in office.
Iran risks that the move, coupled with the seizure of a South Korean tanker in the Persian Gulf, will increase pressure on the West and the incoming Biden team to act swiftly to revive the 2015 international nuclear deal and lift the penalty of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s economy has plagued, experts said.
“Iran is sending a clear message to Biden’s government that it is still interested, that Biden should act quickly before the window closes,” said Kelsey Davenport, director of non-proliferation policy at the Nonprofit Arms Control Association.
But, she added, “Iran must be careful not to overplay its hand.”
By enriching uranium to 20 percent, Iran will stand only one technical step away from producing weapons-grade material needed for an atomic bomb. Davenport calls it “a significant increase” and says “20 percent is about 90 percent of the work required to get a gun degree. ‘
If Iran chooses to defuse tensions, the increased enrichment could still be reversed, along with other incremental violations of the 2015 agreement that Iran has implemented over the past 18 months, Davenport and other experts said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has suggested that the door remain open after diplomacy – if all signatories to the agreement are reconciled. “Our measures are completely reversible to the FULL compliance of all,” he said tweeted Monday.
Once the United States fulfills its obligations under the agreement and complies with the UN Security Council resolution endorsing the agreement, Iran will quickly return to compliance with the agreement, said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesperson for Iran’s UN mission.
The nuclear deal – which prevented Iran from building an atomic bomb – imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing US and international sanctions. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, reinstated sanctions that were lifted, and imposed low new sanctions.
In response, Iran violated the terms of the agreement in a step-by-step increase, without terminating the agreement altogether. When the agreement was first implemented and Tehran complied with its terms, Iran’s ‘breakout time’ to secure enough weapons-grade material for an atomic bomb was 12 months. Now the outbreak time has dropped to about three to four months due to the transgressions of Iran.
Biden has promised to return the US to the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if Iran sticks to it again. Biden has said he wants to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal, and Tehran appears to be signaling that if the next president does not act quickly to ease economic pressure on Iran, it could decide to abandon the agreement and to pursue secret nuclear weapons. project.
“By taking this step so close that Biden takes office, Iran is bringing itself to the top of the headlines and creating a sense of urgency around its core activities,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. . .
Geranmayeh and other experts said the move was also a way to satisfy elements in Iran with a more difficult line, who remain skeptical about the nuclear deal and want to retaliate against the US and Israel after the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. which Iran blamed Israel for. the alleged sabotage of an enrichment plant at Natanz and the assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a US drunken strike in Baghdad a year ago.
Compared to the alternatives, the decision to expand uranium enrichment is a calibrated step that will still enable Iran to lower the temperature in the future, Geranmayeh said.
“It’s still very calculated, manageable and reversible,” she said.
Iran’s enrichment decision nevertheless represents a major violation of the nuclear deal. Tehran has not enriched uranium to 20 percent pure since the nuclear deal was signed in 2015, and the agreement allowed enrichment to only 3.67 percent. Iran has already exceeded the level in recent years, enriching to less than five percent, and it far exceeded the limits of the amount of little enriched uranium it could store.
Iran also said on Monday it had made progress in its enrichment process, saying it had reduced the time to enrich uranium to 20 percent from 24 to 12 hours.
The Trump administration and other opponents of the nuclear deal say Iran should not be rewarded for violating the agreement, and that it has always used the threat to obtain the bomb to extract concessions from Western powers.
The Foreign Ministry on Monday called Iran’s extensive enrichment “a clear attempt to step up its campaign of nuclear blackmail, an attempt that will continue to fail.”
Richard Goldberg, who served on President Trump’s National Security Council, said Iran’s extensive enrichment work and other actions were designed to create an “atmosphere of crisis” aimed at eliciting a response from Washington.
“It is noteworthy that the steps they are taking are almost always modulated to be far enough to create a media frenzy, but not to go too far to provoke an American or Israeli strike,” Goldberg, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies brainstorm.
The last time Tehran enriched uranium to 20 percent levels, Israel weighed military action against Iran, prompting Washington to pursue diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement. President Barack Obama’s first secretary of defense, Robert Gates, wrote in his memoirs’ Duty ‘that’ Israel’s leaders are itching to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday condemned Iran’s enrichment movement and warned: “Israel will not allow Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”
European powers Britain, France and Germany, which have signed the 2015 agreement with the US, Russia and China, are cautiously optimistic that the Biden team will be able to work out a way to revive the agreement with Iran. However, two European diplomats told NBC News that they were concerned about all the major players in the last days of Trump’s presidency.
Tensions have been running high between Iran and its two arch-enemies, the US and Israel, since the assassination of nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh in November. After U.S. officials accused Iraq-backed militias in Iraq of firing rockets at the U.S. embassy assembly in Baghdad on Dec. 20, President Trump issued a warning to Iran. ” Some friendly health advice to Iran: if one American is killed, I will hold Iran accountable, ” the president said tweeted. “Think about it.”
In the run-up to the 3rd anniversary of Soleimani’s death, the Trump administration sent B-52 bombers during a flight over the region and a nuclear-powered submarine to the Persian Gulf. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller initially ordered the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz home and then turned around, saying the aircraft would remain in the Middle East. Miller said the decision was due to Iranian threats against Trump and other U.S. officials, but did not give further details about the reasons for his face.
As Iran marked the first anniversary of Soleimani’s January 3, 2020, and killed and announced its uranium enrichment plans, its revolutionary guards seized a South Korean tanker, the MT Hankuk Chemi, en route to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates on Monday. . The vessel was transporting a chemical shipment with methanol.
Iran claims to have seized the vessel due to alleged pollution in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The State Department accused Iran of threatening the freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf and trying to use extortion to obtain relief from economic sanctions.
Iran is eager to gain access to about $ 7 billion in frozen assets in South Korea from oil sales, which are locked up under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
“It’s a wall-to-wall financial system that gets cash very quickly and can identify all the places where they have cash that can be used quickly to prevent financial collapse,” Goldberg said.
Jake Sullivan, president of Biden’s national security adviser, who helped negotiate the 2015 agreement, reiterated that the next president is ready to return to the agreement and suggested the new government want to discuss matters outside the original agreement. , including Iran’s growing ballistic missile. arsenal. He told CNN on Sunday that once Iran returned to complying with the nuclear deal in 2015, there would be a ‘follow-up negotiation’ over its missile capability.
“In the broader negotiations, we can finally secure limits on Iran’s ballistic missile technology,” Sullivan said, “and that’s what we intend to pursue through diplomacy.”
However, Iran has not ruled out any negotiations on its ballistic missiles, saying it is only interested in reviving the nuclear deal struck five years ago.
Meanwhile, the Iranian economy remains under severe pressure, with foreign exchange reserves declining. Tehran has requested a $ 5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, but the US has blocked the request.
Amid serious economic problems in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, left no doubt last month that he supports efforts to ease economic pressure on his country and remove US sanctions.
“If the sanctions can be lifted, we must not delay even one hour. … If the sanctions can be lifted in the right, wise … and dignified manner, it must be done,” he told government officials.