Iran on Monday breached a uranium enrichment cap set by a troubled 2015 nuclear deal and warned Europe against taking retaliatory measures, as France decided to send an envoy to Tehran to try to calm tensions.
The move came more than a year after Washington pulled out of the landmark accord between world powers and Tehran, which says it has lost patience with perceived inaction by the remaining European partners.
After Tehran's latest step, US President Donald Trump held talks with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on "ongoing efforts to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon and to end Iran's destabilising behaviour in the Middle East", the White House said in a statement.
Iran surpassing the cap and reaching 4.5 percent enrichment was announced by the country's atomic energy organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi.
"This level of purity completely satisfies the power plant fuel requirements of the country," he said, quoted by the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Kamalvandi hinted that the Islamic republic might stick to this level of enrichment for the time being, which is well below the more than 90-percent level required for a nuclear warhead.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed that Iran had enriched uranium to a level above the deal's cap.
The IAEA said its inspectors "on 8 July verified that Iran is enriching uranium above 3.67 percent U-235".
The European Union said it was "extremely concerned" by the development and called on Iran to "reverse all activities" inconsistent with its deal commitments.
France, Germany and Britain -- the European partners of the international deal -- also urged Tehran to halt its advance towards breaching the cap, as Paris said it was sending a special envoy to Tehran on Tuesday and Wednesday to try and "de-escalate" tensions.
- 'Skip next steps' -
Iran's foreign ministry warned against any escalatory response.
If the Europeans "do certain strange acts, then we would skip all the next steps (in the plan to scale back commitments) and implement the last one", ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.
He did not specify what the final step would be but President Hassan Rouhani had warned previously that Iran could leave the nuclear accord.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated that Iran's actions could be reversed if European partners deliver on their part, insisting there was no better pact than the 2015 deal, of which he was a key architect.
"As it becomes increasingly clear that there won't be a better deal, they're bizarrely urging Iran's full compliance. There's a way out," he tweeted.
- US 'bullying' -
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Sunday that Iran would face "further isolation and sanctions".
China and Russia, the other deal partners, both blamed the United States for the latest step by Iran.
Beijing accused Washington of "unilateral bullying", while Moscow said passing the enrichment cap was one of the "consequences" of the White House abandoning the deal.
Macron held an hour-long conversation with Rouhani on Saturday and said he wanted to "explore the conditions for a resumption of dialogue between all parties" within a week.
His envoy Emmanuel Bonne will visit Iran "to piece together a de-escalation (strategy), with the actions which need to be taken immediately before July 15", the French presidency said Monday.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday singled out declining oil sales and the effect of financial sanctions as the main issues that needed to be solved.
Otherwise, he said, Tehran would further step back from its nuclear commitments.
Iran says it is not violating the deal, citing terms of the agreement allowing one side to temporarily abandon some of commitments if it deems the other side is not respecting its part of the accord.
According to Middle East analyst Sanam Vakil, Europe would need to engage Iran and the US simultaneously to prevent the situation escalating even further.
"A 'freeze for freeze' is the most immediate goal; keeping Iran within the JCPOA and then sanctions relief from the Trump administration," Vakil, a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think-tank in London, told AFP referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.
Rouhani in May flagged Tehran's intentions to start enriching uranium above the agreed maximum purification level of 3.67 percent.
The IAEA confirmed this month that Iran has exceeded a 300-kilogramme limit on enriched uranium reserves, another cap that was imposed by the deal.
How serious are Iran's breaches of the 2015 deal?
Vienna (AFP) July 8, 2019 - Attention is once again focused on how close Iran could be to a nuclear weapon, after Tehran said it had started enriching uranium to a higher level than agreed in a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the US.
The move comes a week after it was confirmed that the country has also exceeded the deal's limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium.
- What does higher enrichment mean? -
While Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) froze the so-called "breakout time" Tehran would need to produce enough fissile material to make an atomic bomb to one year.
One of the restrictions to achieve this meant that Iran was only permitted to enrich uranium to the level of 3.67 percent -- sufficient for power generation but far below the more than 90-percent level required for a nuclear warhead.
Iran's atomic energy organisation said on July 8 it had gone over the level of 4.5 percent.
Iranian officials have hinted they may go up to five percent, the level needed to produce fuel for Iran's only nuclear power station at Bushehr.
While the differences in percentages may sound small, former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley said that once the 3.67-percent cap was breached, enriching to higher purities becomes much easier because most of the effort is spent at the beginning of the process.
However, he told AFP that in his opinion "increasing from 3.67 percent to five percent is virtual proof they are not working on a bomb".
"It is insignificant... a poke in (US President Donald) Trump's eye."
- What does stockpile limit breach mean? -
On July 1 the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed that Iran had marginally exceeded the JCPOA's 300-kilogramme (660-pound) stockpile limit of enriched uranium.
However, experts said Iran would need several times this amount before it would be able to even start amassing enough material for a bomb.
"At this point in time it's certainly not a matter of great concern, because there is still time," Olli Heinonen, former IAEA head of safeguards, said of the breach.
However, he cautioned that if Iran continued stockpiling in a year from now it could gather a tonne of the material, slashing the time it would take to produce weapons grade material.
Iran has stressed that all the breaches announced so far could be reversed "in hours" if the other parties to the nuclear deal make good on their side of the bargain, meaning providing relief from sanctions.
- Which moves would cause more alarm? -
Iran has said a "third phase" of reducing its commitments under the JCPOA may take place in the coming months if no agreement can be reached with the other parties.
One direction this could take is an increase in centrifuge installation, particularly of more advanced models such as the IR-2M. More than 1,000 of these were removed from Natanz and put into storage under the JCPOA.
Prior to the deal, Iran had around 20,000 centrifuges of various kinds and amassed some 8,000 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium.
If the IR-2Ms were redeployed, they could bring the time needed for enriching weapons-grade uranium down to seven months, according to David Albright from the Institute for Science and International Security, a think thank.
However, Kelley said the "breakout" concept is misleading if it only focuses on Iran's stocks of nuclear material.
"You have to go back and say: 'Where are they in the process of (in terms of developing) high explosives, machining'," Kelley said, adding that he believed Iran was currently "deficient" in those areas.
Iran would also have to test and procure various bits of equipment -- activities that should be detectable, Kelley said.
A former French ambassador to Iran, Francois Nicoullaud, pointed out that having only one weapon "would leave Iran vulnerable once it had been tested" and that it would be better to have "at least two or three".
For a nuclear capability of that kind, "the timeframe is undoubtedly three to five years from now," Nicoullaud wrote on his blog.
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Iran set to exceed nuclear deal uranium enrichment cap
Tehran (AFP) July 7, 2019
Iran said Sunday 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 the remaining parties to the landmark 2015 agreement after Washington unilaterally pulled out. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Sunday that Iran would face "further isolation and sanctions", adding to a raft ... read more
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