Iraq News Now

Iran

announced on Monday it would soon breach limits on the amount of enriched

uranium it can stockpile under a 2015 international agreement, in a new point

of contention with the United States, which accused Tehran of “nuclear

blackmail.”
Tensions between Iran and the United States are rising

more than a year after President Donald Trump announced Washington was

withdrawing from the nuclear deal. Fears of a confrontation increased last week

when oil tankers in the Gulf were attacked.
The accord, which Iran and the other

signatories have maintained following Trump’s decision, caps Iran’s stock of

low-enriched uranium at 300 kg enriched to 3.67 percent.
But Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization

spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Monday: “We have quadrupled the rate of

enrichment (of uranium) and even increased it more recently, so that in 10 days

it will bypass the 300 kg limit.”
“Iran’s reserves are every day increasing at a

more rapid rate,” he told state TV, adding that “the move will be reversed once

other parties fulfil their commitments.”
The move further undermines the nuclear pact also signed

by Russia, Britain, Germany, China and the European Union, but Iranian

President Hassan Rouhani said the collapse of the deal would not be in the

interests of the region or the world.
A White House National Security Council

spokesman said Iran’s plan amounted to “nuclear blackmail” and must be met with

increased international pressure.
The nuclear deal seeks to head off any pathway

to an Iranian nuclear bomb in return for the removal of most international

sanctions.
Britain said if Iran breached agreed limits

then London would look at “all options.”
Israel, Iran’s arch foe, urged world powers to

step up sanctions against Tehran swiftly should it exceed the enriched uranium

limit.
However, European Union foreign policy chief

Federica Mogherini said the EU would only react to any breach if the

International Atomic Energy Agency formally identified one.
GULF TANKERS
U.S.-Iran tensions are growing again following

attacks last Thursday on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, a vital oil

shipping route. Trump’s administration has accused Iran of being behind the

incidents. Iran denies having any role.
Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, Major

General Mohammad Baqeri, on Monday denied Tehran was behind the attacks and

said if the Islamic Republic decided to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz

shipping lane it would do so publicly.
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National

Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said Tehran was responsible for security in

the Gulf and urged U.S. forces to leave the region, state TV said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken

to officials from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, China, Kuwait, South

Korea, Britain and other countries to share evidence of Iran’s involvement in

the attacks on the Norwegian and Japanese tankers, a senior State Department

official said. 
Iran on Monday accused its main regional rival

Saudi Arabia - a close U.S. ally - of adopting a “militaristic, crisis-based

approach” for accusing Tehran of carrying out the tanker attacks.
In May, Tehran said it would reduce compliance

with the nuclear pact in protest at the U.S. decision to unilaterally pull out

of the agreement and reimpose sanctions.
The accord requires Iran to curb its uranium

enrichment capacity, capping Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium at 300 kg of

uranium hexafluoride enriched to 3.67 percent or its equivalent for 15 years.

That is far below the 90 percent needed for weapons grade uranium and also

below the 20 percent level to which Iran enriched uranium before the deal.
A series of U.N. inspections under the deal

have verified that Iran has been meeting its commitments.
Iran’s Rouhani said on Monday that European

nations still had time to save the accord.
“It’s a crucial moment, and France can still

work with other signatories of the deal and play an historic role to save the

deal in this very short time,” Rouhani was quoted as saying during a meeting

with France’s new ambassador in Iran.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he regretted Iran’s

announcement but that Paris would hold talks with Iran and its partners to

avoid any further escalation in the region.
NUCLEAR REACTOR
Kamalvandi, in a news conference at Iran’s

Arak heavy water nuclear reactor which has been reconfigured under the deal,

said Tehran could rebuild the underground facility to make it functional. Heavy

water can be employed in reactors to produce plutonium, a fuel used in nuclear

warheads.
In January, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar

Salehi told state TV that “despite pouring concrete in pipes within the core of

the Arak reactor ... Iran had purchased pipes for replacement in case the West

violated the deal.”
Mojtaba Zolnour, head of parliament’s nuclear

committee, said Iran would quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty against

the spread of nuclear weapons unless European powers saved the 2015 agreement.
The western European signatories to the deal -

France, Britain and Germany - have defended it as the best way to limit Iran’s

enrichment of uranium.
But Iran has repeatedly criticized delays in

setting up a European mechanism that would shield trade with Iran from U.S.

sanctions in an effort to save the nuclear deal.
The United States and the IAEA believe Iran had

a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever having had one.
Pompeo said on Sunday the United States did

not want to go to war with Iran but would take every action necessary,

including diplomacy, to guarantee safe navigation through Middle East shipping

lanes.
Iran said on Monday it had exposed a cyber

espionage network, accused the CIA of running it and that several U.S. spies

had been arrested in different countries as a result.