The New York Times
Iran Threatens to Violate Nuclear Deal’s Limits on Uranium Enrichment
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Iran’s Arak nuclear plant in 2011.CreditCreditHamid Foroutan/Iranian Students News Agency, via Associated Press
By Megan Specia
June 17, 2019
LONDON — Iran announced plans on Monday to stop complying with the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which the United States withdrew from last year, leaving the door open to an “unlimited rise” in Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium amid escalating tensions between the two nations.
The announcement by Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization was the country’s latest signal that it will abandon the pact unless the other signatories to the deal help Iran circumvent punishing United States economic sanctions imposed by President Trump.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the organization, said that Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile would surpass a limit set in the agreement within the next 10 days, the semiofficial news agency Tasnim reported. Low-enriched uranium can be used in a nuclear reactor, but not in an atomic bomb.
He said, however, that Iran would stay within the limits if Britain, France, Germany and the full European Union — all of which are signatories to the nuclear deal — followed through on plans to give Iran access to international financial systems, sidestepping American sanctions, and also made up for lost oil revenue.
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Helga Schmid, left, a senior European Union diplomat, at a meeting with Abbas Araghchi, right, a political deputy at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in March.CreditJoe Klamar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“As long as they comply by their commitments, these will go back,” Mr. Kamalvandi said in a televised news conference at the country’s Arak nuclear plant.
In early May, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said his country would reduce compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal and take several steps to resume the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material if Europe did not agree to a system to ease the effects of American sanctions.
At the time, he set a 60-day deadline for the Europeans, who hope to salvage the deal despite Mr. Trump’s opposition, to make good on promises to help preserve Iran’s oil and banking sectors. That deadline expires early next month.
But Mr. Rouhani was careful to maintain that while Iran would retain its enriched uranium and heavy water rather than selling them to other nations, the country, for the time being, would stay within the limits set by the nuclear deal.
Monday’s announcement was the first time Iran’s government had said explicitly that it would step beyond the pact.
On Sunday, Helga Schmid, a senior Europe Union diplomat, visited Tehran for meetings on the nuclear deal. Ms. Schmid, who helped negotiate the 2015 agreement, reiterated her support for the deal, according to Reuters, and discussed options to enable trade to continue between the bloc and Iran.
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Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned
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