WASHINGTON – Iran’s decision to dramatically increase uranium enrichment aims to strengthen its position in future negotiations with President-elect Joe Biden’s government, say experts, European diplomats and former American officials.
The move reflects Iran’s growing desperation to lift U.S. economic sanctions, but it risks triggering a confrontation with Israel or the U.S. during President Donald Trump’s final weeks in office.
Iran is betting that the move, along with the seizure of a South Korean tanker in the Persian Gulf, will increase pressure on the West and Biden’s new team to act quickly to revive the 2015 international nuclear deal and suspend punishment US sanctions that devastated Iran’s economy, experts said.
“Iran is sending a clear message to the Biden government, that it is still interested, that Biden needs to act quickly before the window closes,” said Kelsey Davenport, non-proliferation policy director for the nonprofit Arms Control Association .
But, she added, “Iran must be careful not to overdo its hand.”
By enriching 20 percent uranium, Iran will be just a technical step away from producing the weapons-appropriate material needed for an atomic bomb. Davenport called this “a significant escalation” and said that “20% is about 90% of the work required to reach the armament level.”
If Iran decides to defuse tensions, the increase in enrichment can still be reversed, along with other incremental violations of the 2015 agreement that Iran has made over the past 18 months, Davenport and other experts said.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested that the door to diplomacy would remain open – if all signatories to the agreement were to comply with it again. “Our measures are totally reversible with TOTAL compliance by EVERYONE”, he tweeted on Monday.
Once the United States fulfills its obligations under the agreement and complies with the UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the agreement, “Iran will then quickly return to compliance with the nuclear agreement,” said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission in UN.
The nuclear deal – which was supposed to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb – imposed restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for easing US and international sanctions. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, again imposed the sanctions that had been lifted, and introduced several new sanctions.
In response, Iran violated the agreement’s clauses in a step-by-step escalation, stopping before giving up on the agreement altogether. When the agreement was first implemented and Tehran complied with its terms, Iran’s “flight time” to ensure sufficient weapon material for an atomic bomb was 12 months. The flight time has now dropped to about three to four months due to Iranian violations.
Biden promised to return the US to the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA), if Iran once again complies with its provisions. Biden said he wants to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal, and Tehran seems to be signaling that if the next president does not act quickly to ease economic pressure on Iran, he may choose to abandon the agreement and pursue clandestine nuclear weapons.
“By making this decision so close to Biden’s arrival in office, Iran is putting itself at the top of the headlines, creating a sense of urgency around its nuclear activities,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy researcher at the European Council on Relations Exteriors.
Geranmayeh and other experts said the move was also a way to placate elements of the hardline in Iran who remain skeptical of the nuclear deal and eager to retaliate against the US and Israel after the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Iran attributed to Israel the suspicion of sabotage at an enrichment plant in Natanz and the death of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a US drone attack in Baghdad a year ago.
Compared to alternatives, the decision to expand uranium enrichment is a calibrated move that still allows Iran a way to reduce the temperature in the future, said Geranmayeh.
“It is still very calculated, managed and reversible,” she said.
Still, Iran’s enrichment decision represents a major violation of the nuclear deal. Tehran has not enriched uranium to 20% purity since the nuclear agreement was signed in 2015, and the agreement allowed enrichment of only up to 3.67%. Iran had already exceeded that level last year, enriching to less than five percent, and far exceeded the limits on the amount of low-enriched uranium it could stockpile.
Iran also said on Monday that it had moved forward in its enrichment process, saying it had reduced uranium enrichment time 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 deal and has always used the threat of obtaining the bomb to extract concessions from Western powers.
On Monday, the State Department called Iran’s expanded enrichment “a clear attempt to increase its nuclear extortion campaign, an attempt that will continue to fail.”
Richard Goldberg, who served on President Trump’s National Security Council, said Iran’s expanded enrichment work and other actions are planned to create “an atmosphere of crisis” aimed at stimulating a response from Washington.
“It is remarkable that the steps they take are almost always modulated to go far enough to create a media frenzy, but not go so far as to provoke an American or Israeli attack,” said Goldberg, now a senior member of the Foundation for the Defense of Tank of ideas of democracies.
The last time Tehran enriched uranium to 20 percent levels, Israel evaluated military action against Iran, prompting Washington to pursue diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement. President Barack Obama’s first defense secretary, Robert Gates , wrote in his memoirs “Duty” that “Israel’s leaders were eager to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday condemned Iran’s enrichment action and warned: “Israel will not allow Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon”.
European powers Great Britain, France and Germany, which signed the 2015 agreement with the United States, Russia and China, are cautiously optimistic that Biden’s team will be able to find a way to revive the agreement with Iran. they are concerned about the boldness of all key players in the final days of Trump’s presidency, two European diplomats told NBC News.
Tensions have escalated between Iran and its two archenemies, the United States and Israel, since the death of nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh in November. After US officials accused Iran-backed militias in Iraq of firing rockets at the American embassy complex in Baghdad on December 20, President Trump issued an alert to Iran. “Some friendly Iran health advice: if one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible “, said the president tweeted. “Think carefully.”
In the run-up to the January 3 anniversary of Soleimani’s death, the Trump administration dispatched B-52 bombers on a flight over the region and a nuclear submarine to the Persian Gulf. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller initially ordered the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to return home and then changed positions, saying the aircraft carrier would remain in the Middle East. Miller said the decision was due to Iranian threats against Trump and other American officials, but offered no further details on the reasons for his turnaround.
While Iran marked Soleimani’s first birthday on January 3, 2020, killing and announcing its uranium enrichment plans, its Revolutionary Guard forces seized on Monday a South Korean tanker, MT Hankuk Chemi, with destination to Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates. The ship was carrying a shipment of chemicals including methanol.
Iran claimed that it seized the ship for alleged pollution in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The State Department accused Iran of threatening freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf and of 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 with oil sales, which are blocked under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
“This is a regime against the wall financially, running out of money very quickly and identifying all the places where there is money that could be used quickly to prevent financial collapse,” said Goldberg.
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President-elect Biden, who helped negotiate the 2015 agreement, reiterated that the next president was ready to return to the agreement and suggested that the new government would like to discuss issues beyond the original agreement, including the growing ballistic missile from Iran arsenal. He told CNN on Sunday that as soon as Iran resumes its 2015 nuclear deal, there will be a “subsequent negotiation” about its missile capabilities.
“In this broader negotiation, we can ultimately guarantee limits to Iran’s ballistic missile technology,” said Sullivan, “and that is what we intend to pursue through diplomacy.”
Iran, however, has ruled out any negotiations on its ballistic missiles, saying it is only interested in reviving the nuclear deal that was signed five years ago.
Meanwhile, Iran’s economy remains under severe pressure, with foreign currency reserves dwindling. Tehran applied for a $ 5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, but the United States blocked the request.
In the midst of severe economic difficulties in Iran, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month, left no doubt that he supports efforts to ease economic pressure on his country and obtain the removal of American sanctions.
“If sanctions can be lifted, we should not be delayed by an hour. … If sanctions can be lifted in the right, wise … and dignified manner, it must be done,” he told government officials.