Iran ignored US and EU warnings Wednesday and vowed to exceed within days the maximum uranium enrichment level it agreed to in the landmark 2015 nuclear accord.
Iran is acting on its May 8 threat to suspend parts of the agreement in response to US President Donald Trump's reimposition of crippling sanctions after withdrawing from it in May last year.
President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday's decision was in response to failure by other parties to the deal to keep up their promises and provide Iran relief from the US sanctions.
"On July 7, our enrichment level will no longer be 3.67 percent. We will put aside this commitment. We will increase (the enrichment level) beyond 3.67 percent to as much as we want, as much as is necessary, as much as we need," Rouhani told a cabinet meeting.
The enrichment maximum set in the agreement is sufficient for power generation but far below the more than 90 percent level required for a nuclear warhead.
"Be careful with the threats, Iran. They can come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before!" Trump tweeted in response to the announcement.
France warned Tehran that it would "gain nothing" by leaving the deal and said "challenging the agreement would only increase tensions already high" in the Middle East.
Iran insists that 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.
Rouhani stressed that Iran's action would be reversed if the other parties to the nuclear deal made good on their side of the bargain -- relief from sanctions.
"We will remain committed to the (nuclear deal) as long as the other parties are committed," he said.
"We will act on the JCPOA 100 percent the day that the other party acts 100 percent (too)," he added using the deal's acronym.
Iran has sought to pressure the other parties -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- to save the deal.
- 'Playing with fire' -
On May 8, Iran announced it would no longer respect the limits set on the size of its stockpiles of enriched uranium and heavy water, and threatened to abandon further nuclear commitments, including exceeding the agreed uranium enrichment maximum from July 7.
Rouhani said Iran will also deliver on its threat to resume construction of a heavy water reactor after July 7 and will bring it to the condition that "according to you, is dangerous and can produce plutonium".
But all these measures can be reversed in "hours" if the other parties "live up to their commitments", he said.
Trump warned Monday that Iran is "playing with fire" after Tehran said it had exceeded the limit set on its enriched uranium stockpile.
Rouhani said it was the US that started the fire and Washington has to "put it out" by returning to the nuclear deal.
His adviser, Hesamodin Ashena, warned Trump against listening to hawks in his administration, hinting aggression against Iran could make him a "one-term president".
"We have unseated an American president in the past, we can do it again," he tweeted, referring to Jimmy Carter, whose bid for a second term was marred by the Iran hostage crisis in 1980.
Israel urged European states to impose sanctions on Iran for abandoning its nuclear commitments.
Russia voiced regret but said the move was a consequence of US pressure, which has pushed the deal towards collapse.
The diplomatic chiefs of Britain, France, Germany and the EU said they were "extremely concerned" and urged Iran to reverse its decision.
Europe has sought to save the nuclear deal by setting up a payment mechanism known as INSTEX which is meant to help Iran skirt the US sanctions.
Rouhani dismissed the mechanism as "hollow", saying it was useless to Iran because it failed to provide for financing of purchases of Iranian oil.
He took issue with the EU for calling on Iran to stay committed to the deal.
The deal "is either good or bad. If it's good, everyone should stay committed to it," not just Iran, Rouhani said.
How serious are Iran's breaches of the 2015 deal?
Vienna (AFP) July 4, 2019 - Attention is once again focused on how close Iran could be to a nuclear weapon, as Tehran is set Sunday to start enriching uranium to a higher level than agreed in a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the US.
The move comes days after it was confirmed that the country has also exceeded the deal's limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium.
- What does stockpile limit breach mean? -
Iran's breach of its stockpile limit currently does not mean a great deal in terms of any potential nuclear weapons development.
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 needs to produce enough fissile material to make an atom bomb to one year.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed Tehran's claim Monday that it had exceeded the uranium limit by just over two kilograms.
The limit for enriched uranium stockpiles in the JCPOA is 300kg, and experts say Iran would need several times this amount before it would be able to even start obtaining the material for a bomb.
- What about the enrichment level? -
Under the JCPOA, Iran is only meant 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.
Former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley says that once the 3.67-percent cap is breached, enriching to higher purities becomes much easier because most of the effort is spent at the beginning of the process.
"If you do enrich to 3.5 percent, you've done half the work it takes to get the rest of the way, and if you go up to 20 percent, you're up to around 80 percent of the work," he told AFP.
According to Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's former head of safeguards, Iran could offer several justifications for enriching to levels beyond 3.67 percent, including supplying its research reactor in Tehran or producing medical isotopes.
- What about the Arak reactor? -
Iran has also said it will resume building a heavy water reactor in Arak in central Iran, a project that had been mothballed under the JCPOA.
In theory, once operational, it would eventually be capable of producing plutonium, the alternative to uranium for a nuclear weapon.
David Albright from the Institute for Science and International Security think thank says such an action "would be very serious and a major impetus for the E3 (the European parties to the JCPOA) to snap back sanctions, but it would take Iran several years to finish the reactor and produce plutonium."
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 -- relief from sanctions.
- Which moves would cause more alarm? -
A key factor is whether Iran moves to ramp up 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 8,000kg 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 Albright.
However, Kelley says 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 high explosives, machining'," Kelley says, adding that he believes Iran is currently "deficient" in these areas.
Iran would also have to test and procure various equipment -- activities that should be detectable, Kelley said.
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Iran trying to 'blackmail' world by violating nuclear deal: Netanyahu
Jerusalem (AFP) July 2, 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday accused Iran of breaching the nuclear deal in order to "blackmail" the international community into relieving economic pressure on the Islamic republic. "This week Iran openly violated the nuclear deal by increasing the stockpile of enriched uranium (to beyond that) allowed under the deal," Netanyahu said at an early reception in Jerusalem marking the United States' July 4 independence day. Iran said Monday it had exceeded a limit on its enric ... read more
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