By Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran has told the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog that it intends to enrich uranium to 20% pure, a level it reached before its agreement in 2015, at its Fordow site in a mountain was buried, the agency said Friday.
The move is the latest in several recent announcements by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it intends to further breach the agreement, which it began violating in 2019 in retaliation for Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement and the reinstatement of US sanctions. against Tehran.
This move was one of many passed in a law passed by the Iranian parliament last month in response to the assassination of the country’s leading nuclear scientist, who is to blame for Israel. Such steps by Iran could hamper US President Joe Biden’s efforts to rejoin the agreement.
“Iran has informed the agency that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization intends to produce low – enriched uranium (LEU) up to 20 percent at the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, in order to comply with a legal act recently passed by the country’s Parliament has been adopted. ” said the IAEA in a statement.
An IAEA report to member states earlier Friday, obtained by Reuters, uses similar wording in describing Iran’s letter to the IAEA of December 31.
“The letter from Iran to the Agency … did not say when this enrichment activity would take place,” the IAEA statement read.
Fordow was built inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from airstrikes, and the 2015 agreement does not allow for enrichment there. Iran is already enriching on Fordow with the first generation IR-1 centrifuges.
Iran has violated the agreement’s agreement by 3.67% on the purity with which it can enrich uranium, but it has so far only risen to 4.5%, less than the 20% it achieved before the agreement and the 90% who have weapons degree. .
The main purpose of the agreement was to extend the time that Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb to at least a year of about two to three months. It also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe that Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons program that stopped it in 2003. Iran denies ever having one.
(Posted by Francois Murphy Edited by Frances Kerry)