Iran breaks nuclear deal limit on enriched uranium stockpile

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran has surpassed the limit imposed on its stockpile of low enriched uranium by the 2015 nuclear deal under which Iran and five other nations, including the US, agreed to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Tehran has long threatened to breach the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) since the US withdrew from the landmark accord in May 2018. The US said the deal did not go far enough to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Among the terms of the deal are a limit on stockpiles of enriched uranium and heavy water.

“An informed source … announced that the stockpile of 3.67 percent enriched uranium has surpassed 300 kilograms,” FARS, a news agency close to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported Monday.

“Following last Wednesday’s weighting by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, today they measured the weight of  the production of the enriched material and [found] the stockpile of Iran has passed the ceiling of 300 kilograms,” the source said.

Speaking to reporters at the funeral of a senior parliamentarian on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif appeared to confirm the news, saying: “As far as I am informed, Iran has surpassed the 300 kg limit… we said very transparently what we were going to do.”  

After the US government failed to renew waivers granted to eight major customers of Iranian oil in early May, the Iranian Supreme National Security Council suspended two clauses of the JCPOA on May 8.

It threatened to take further steps if European signatories of the deal failed to ease US pressure on Iran’s oil and banking sectors.

The news comes just days after Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who attended a meeting of the Joint Commission of the JCPOA, said the dialogue in Vienna was “a step forward”.

The UK, France, and Germany announced during the summit that INSTEX, the financial mechanism to ease economic pressure on Iran, has become “operational”.

In the meeting, attended by China, France, Russia, Germany, the UK, and Iran, the Commission “tasked experts to look into practical solutions in particular for the export of low enriched uranium (LEU) and heavy water under appropriate arrangements”.

The European countries have repeatedly called on Iran to refrain from taking further steps towards breaching the JCPOA.

Monday’s development is likely to play into the hands of hawks in US President Donald Trump’s administration who are in favor of choking the Iranian economy to bring it to the negotiating table.

The decision will weaken the hand of European government who have tried to ease tensions in the Middle East, which have come to the brink of a war in recent weeks following two attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and the downing of a US Navy reconnaissance drone on May 20.  

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has taken a particularly harsh line against talks with the US government, describing it as the “most vicious” and US calls for negotiation a “deception”.