Iran violates the 2015 agreement's uranium stockpile limit and defies signatories

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stated that its inspectors verify whether Iran has accumulated more enriched uranium than expected.

Dubai / Vienna:

Iran announced on Monday that it had amassed more Leu than anticipated in its 2015 deal with the major powers, its first major step in violating the deal since the United States pulled out more than a year ago.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United States nuclear monitoring agency, which monitors Iran's nuclear programme under the agreement, confirmed in Vienna that Tehran had exceeded the limit.

This measure could have serious consequences for diplomacy at a time when European countries are trying to pull the US and Iran off the brink of war, less than two weeks after the aborted Washington airstrikes at the last minute.

The Europeans, who opposed President Donald Trump's decision last year to abandon the nuclear agreement signed under his predecessor Barack Obama, had pleaded with Iran to respect its parameters.

Iran stated that it intended to do so, but that it could not do so indefinitely, as long as the sanctions imposed by Trump had deprived it of the benefits that it was expected to receive in exchange for accepting the limitation of its nuclear programme under the agreement.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Iran had crossed the threshold, just as he had announced: "We have said very transparently what we are going to do."

Iran announced in May that it would speed up the production of enriched uranium in response to the severe hardening of the Trump sanctions this month. Washington has now effectively ordered all countries to stop all their purchases of Iranian oil or face their own sanctions, what Teheran calls an "economic war" designed to starve its population.

Cancelled strikes

In the two months following the tightening of US sanctions, the confrontation took on a military dimension, with Washington accusing Tehran of attacks on ships and Iran shooting down an American drone. Trump ordered air strikes in retaliation, but only to cancel the strikes a few minutes before impact.

Enrichment of uranium at a low level of 3.6% fissile material is the first step in a process that could potentially be used to produce highly enriched uranium that can be used to build a nuclear warhead. Iran has always denied that it intends to build a weapon.

The nuclear agreement places limits on the amount of enriched uranium Iran can retain and on the purity of these stockpiles. Mr. Zarif said that Iran's next decision would be to enrich uranium beyond 3.6%, a threshold that Tehran previously announced it would cross on July 7.

European officials had last-minute talks with Iranian emissaries last week in the hope of convincing them not to cross the thresholds. These discussions have failed. Iranians have said that Europe's efforts to protect Iran from the impact of US sanctions are inadequate.

Europeans say they want to help Iran boost its economy. But so far, these efforts have failed. Iran has been largely sidelined from oil markets, and all major foreign companies have cancelled their investment plans for fear of evading US regulations.

The confrontation has put the United States in the position of demanding that the Europeans guarantee Iran's respect for an agreement that Washington itself has rejected.

Trump says the deal is too weak because some of its conditions are not permanent and do not cover non-nuclear issues such as Iran's missile program and regional behavior. Washington claims that the sanctions are aimed at pushing Tehran back to the negotiating table. Iran says it can't talk until Washington ignores the deal already signed.

Israel, which regards Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat, has supported Trump's hard line, as well as America's allies among the rich Arab countries of the Gulf, who view Iran as an enemy and benefit from the fact that its oil is distant from markets.

"Imagine what will happen if the material stored by the Iranians becomes fissile, of military quality, and then like a real bomb," said Joseph Cohen, head of Israeli intelligence Mossad, at a security conference. "The Middle East, and then the whole world, will be a different place. Therefore, the world must not allow this to happen."

The chairman of the Iranian parliament's Committee on national security and foreign policy said on Monday that Israel would be destroyed in half an hour if the United States attacked Iran, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.