Iran announced on Monday that it had increased its uranium enrichment levels, bringing it closer to developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon in six months.
The resumption of enrichment to 20 percent was the latest in a series of escalations that followed President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from a 2015 nuclear deal that had limited Iran to 4 to 5 percent enrichment levels. .
In another provocation, Iran seized a South Korean chemical tanker, citing “concerns about environmental and chemical pollution,” reported the semi-official news agency Tasmin.
The seizure of the ship, confirmed by the South Korean government, comes at a time when Tehran is pressing Seoul to release $ 7 billion in frozen funds because of United States sanctions.
Further increasing tensions, the Pentagon said on Sunday that it ordered the aircraft carrier Nimitz to remain in the Middle East, just three days after directing the ship home in an effort to ease growing tensions with Tehran.
“Due to the recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against President Trump and other US government officials, I have ordered the USS Nimitz to suspend its routine redistribution,” said acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller in a statement.
An Iranian government spokesman, Ali Rabiei, told the state news agency IRNA on Monday that President Hassan Rouhani ordered the implementation of a law passed last week authorizing the new levels of enrichment.
“A few minutes ago, the 20 percent enriched uranium production process started at the Fordow enrichment complex,” Rabiei told Iran’s semi-official news agency Mehr.
Fuel enriched at this level is not enough to produce a bomb, but it is close. Moving from current levels to 20% is much more difficult than going from that level to the 90% purity traditionally used for pump fuel.
Fordow is Iran’s newest nuclear facility, and is embedded in the bottom of a mountain in a well-protected base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. To hit it successfully, it would take repeated attacks with the largest bunker-destroying bomb in the American arsenal.
The decision to step up uranium enrichment, while not surprising, was officially taken after the November assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, long identified by the American and Israeli intelligence services as the guiding figure behind a secret effort to design an atomic warhead.
It also coincides with the first anniversary of the murder of a revered military commander, Qassim Suleimani, in a United States missile attack.
In a short declaration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Iran of continuing to act in accordance with its intention to “develop a military nuclear program”.
“Israel will not allow Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons,” said Netanyahu.
The European Union said on Monday that Iran’s decision to increase uranium enrichment would be a “considerable departure” from its 2015 commitments.
Peter Stano, a bloc spokesman, said Brussels would wait until an instruction from the director of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, scheduled for late Monday, before deciding what action to take. France, Great Britain and Germany are signatories to the 2015 agreement.
The South Korean flag tanker was sailing in waters off Oman on Monday, when Iranian authorities demanded that it move to Iranian waters for investigation. The ship had 20 crew members on board, including five South Koreans.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our embassy in Iran have examined the detailed circumstances of the seizure of our ship and confirmed the safety of the crew,” the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We are asking for the early release of the ship.”
The Defense Ministry in Seoul said it was dispatching South Korean navy destroyer Choe Yeong to the waters where the tanker was apprehended, issuing cautionary warnings to other South Korean ships sailing the waters. The Navy destroyer is on an anti-piracy mission in the region.
Iranian officials have always maintained that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, not weapons. But they expressed fury and vowed revenge for the murder of Fakhrizadeh, the nuclear scientist.
In December, Iranian lawmakers passed a law ordering an immediate increase in the uranium enrichment program and calling for the expulsion of international nuclear inspectors if American sanctions were not lifted by early February, representing a direct challenge to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Biden’s new national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, expressed optimism that the 2015 nuclear deal could still be saved.
In a Foreign Affairs article published in May, Sullivan and Daniel Benaim, a Biden Middle East adviser when he was vice president, argued that the United States should “immediately restore nuclear diplomacy with Iran and save what it can. of the 2015 nuclear deal “and then work with the allies and Iran” to negotiate a subsequent deal “.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Sullivan said that as soon as Iran resumes its 2015 nuclear deal, there will be negotiations over its missile capabilities.
“In this broader negotiation, we can, in the end, guarantee limits to Iran’s ballistic missile technology,” said Sullivan, “and that is what we intend to pursue through diplomacy.”
But the missile program was not covered by the previous agreement because the Iranians refused to commit to any limitations in its development or testing.
And that presupposes that the Iranians would be willing to return to the terms of the 2015 agreement in any case.
The report was contributed by Adam Rasgon from Jerusalem and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul.