Iran said on Sunday it would further scale back its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, raising its uranium enrichment level beyond agreed levels to produce fuel for power plants.
The announcement, confirming what Reuters reported on Saturday, signaled a growing challenge to escalating US sanctions pressure.
“WE WILL ENRICH URANIUM BASED ON OUR NEEDS”
In a news conference, senior Iranian officials said Tehran would keep reducing its commitments every 60 days, unless signatories of the pact moved to protect it from US sanctions, but they left the door open to diplomacy.
Before the deal was sealed, Iran produced 20% enriched uranium needed to fuel its Tehran reactor and the level of enrichment for its southern Bushehr nuclear power plant was 5%. “We will enrich uranium based on our needs… right now we don’t need to enrich uranium needed for Tehran reactor,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman.
“We will enrich uranium to the level that is needed for the Bushehr reactor.”
Long-tense relations between Tehran and Washington took a turn for the worse in May 2018 when US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal reached before he took office, and reimposed sanctions.