Iran said yesterday it was set to breach the uranium enrichment cap set by an endangered nuclear deal within hours as it seeks to press other parties into keeping their side of the bargain. The Islamic republic also threatened to abandon more commitments unless a solution is found with parties to the landmark 2015 agreement.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Tehran could further scale back its commitments, but "all such steps are reversible" if European countries deliver on their part.
The move to start enriching uranium above the agreed maximum purification level of 3.67 percent comes despite opposition from the European Union and the United States, which has quit the deal.
President Hassan Rouhani's order to exceed the threshold would be implemented "in a few hours" after the last technical details were sorted, Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said live on state television.
Rouhani initially flagged Tehran's intentions on May 8, exactly a year on from US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoning the multilateral deal.
He has said the move is in response to a failure by remaining
parties to keep their promise to help Iran work around biting sanctions reimposed by the US in the second half of last year.
The arch-rivals have been locked in an escalating war of words with Washington blaming Iran for a series of attacks on tanker ships and Tehran shooting down an American surveillance drone, raising fears of a conflict that both sides have said they want to avoid.
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday singled out Iran’s declining oil sales and the effect of financial sanctions as the main issues that needed to be solved, or Tehran would further step back from its nuclear commitments.
“We hope we can reach a solution otherwise after 60 days we will take the third step as well,” he said, adding that Tehran would give further details at an “opportune moment”.
Iran has previously threatened to also resume building as of July 7 a heavy water reactor — capable of one day producing plutonium — in Arak in central Iran, a project that had bee