Iran announced this Sunday new technical advances in uranium enrichment, continues to intensify its nuclear program, while negotiations to recover the 2015 international agreement remain suspended.
According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Islamic Republic started “feeding the cascade of centrifuges” at the Fordo plantit had recently been modified for greater efficiency.
This technical improvement makes it possible to “change the configuration of the cascade more easily” and move quickly from one level of enrichment to another, the IAEA had explained in a report released last May.
The Fordo plant is located deep in the mountains, about 180 kilometers south of Tehran.
This Sunday, Iran acknowledged that it produced 20% enriched uranium, for the first time, through this device, according to Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).
This is “the last technical step” of a process already announced at the IAEA in June, the official added on Iranian state television IRIB, accusing the international media of “amplifying” and exploiting this information.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reacted immediately, calling for a “clear response from the international community” and “maximum sanctions” against Tehran, to the news confirmed by the IAEA, which is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the commitments assumed by Iran in the international agreement signed in 2015.
With the US unilaterally withdrawing from that deal in 2018, Tehran felt it was legitimate to neglect its obligations, setting off a trajectory of increasing the intensity of enriched uranium produced, which several countries, including the US and Israel, say which is intended to .to produce an atomic bomb.
Negotiations to recover the 2015 international treaty have been suspended since the spring of 2020.while the IAEA complains that Tehran has not allowed conditions to carry out its tasks of monitoring activity in nuclear power plants.
The agency has already announced that it will no longer be able to provide the information needed to monitor Iran’s nuclear program unless there is a change in Tehran’s position soon.
This will be one of the central themes of US President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East, which will begin next Wednesday with a visit to Israel and, later, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“My government will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready return to compliance with the nuclear deal,” Biden wrote in an article published Saturday in the Washington Post.
Source: Observadora
