TEHRAN – Iran has resumed enrichment of uranium by up to 20 percent in the country’s biggest breach to date of the historic nuclear deal with world powers, government spokesman Ali Rabiee told the state newspaper Mehr News on Monday.
Also on Monday, Iran’s revolutionary guard seized a South Korean-flagged vessel carrying thousands of tons of ethanol in the Persian Gulf, according to state news agencies IRIB and FARS News.
The increase in enrichment puts Iran at a technical step from enrichment of 90 percent, the level needed to produce a nuclear warhead. Before the announcement, Iran was enriching uranium by about 4.5%, violating the nuclear pact, but at a significantly lower level.
The news comes amid latent tensions between the United States and Iran in the final days of President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump unilaterally pulled America out of the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, triggering a series of incidents that culminated in the death of Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on January 3 last year.
The announcement of the enrichment and the seizure of the ship came a day after the one-year anniversary of Soleimani’s death, which took thousands to the streets to protest his death in Iraq on Sunday.
According to Iranian officials, enrichment is being carried out at the Iranian nuclear facility in Fordo, which is hidden at the bottom of a mountain near the holy city of Qom. Under the terms of Iran’s nuclear deal, Tehran can only enrich uranium by around 3.5 percent and no enrichment is allowed at the Fordo plant.
The agreement stipulates that, in exchange for agreeing to limit its enrichment of uranium, world powers will grant Iran relief from sanctions.
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Since the United States withdrew from the pact in May 2018 and imposed paralyzing sanctions on Iran, Tehran has consistently violated its own commitments to the agreement, alerting the other five parties to the agreement: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China.
Iran’s decision comes after parliament passed a bill that aims to increase enrichment to pressure Europe to provide relief with sanctions.
Uranium enriched by up to 20 percent can be used to power nuclear reactors, according to Eric Brewer, deputy director of the Nuclear Issues Project at the Center for International Strategic Studies, a study center in Washington DC
Iran has a research reactor that uses almost 20% enriched uranium, but that fuel is supplied by other countries under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, Brewer added. It is not yet clear what Iran is planning to do, if anything, with enriched uranium.
Tehran has long denied seeking to develop a nuclear weapon and says it would be against Islam.
The increase also serves as pressure on President-elect Joe Biden’s next administration. Biden, who was vice president when the United States signed the nuclear deal under President Barack Obama in 2015, said he is willing to return to the pact if Iran complies with the deal and suggested that the deal be expanded.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani last month lowered hopes that the scope of the deal could be extended, saying the country’s ballistic missile program and its regional influence were non-negotiable.
“There is a JCPOA that has been negotiated and agreed upon – either everyone commits to it or not,” he said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Global Action Plan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that inspectors have been monitoring activities at the Fordo site in Iran and that, based on their information, Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi is expected to report to IAEA member states at Monday.
Ali Arouzi and Amin Hossein Khodadadi reported from Tehran; Saphora Smith reported from London.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Amin Hossein Khodadadi contributed.