Iran Prepared to Enrich Uranium at 20%, Breaking Nuclear Agreement
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Iran will not hesitate from stepping up its uranium enrichment to 20%, an Iranian nuclear spokesperson said Monday.
Iran gave an original deadline of July 7th for the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew last year, to find workarounds to Trump’s economic sanctions before it began uranium enrichment above the 3.76% to which it was limited by the agreement.
Because the European countries have not done so to Iran’s satisfaction, the country will now break the stipulations of the accord in 10 days “based on the country’s needs” for nuclear power, Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said.
Besides its nuclear ambitions, Iran has been pinned for a number of provocations in the region over the last two months, which include an attack on Saudi oil tankers last month, a drone attack on Abha airport in Saudi Arabia for which Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels took credit Monday, and another attack on two petroleum shipping vessels last Thursday in the Gulf of Oman that US officials say they have now confidently attributed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
“The problem is in Tehran and not anywhere else,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told an Arab-language newspaper Sunday. “Iran is always the party that’s escalating in the region, carrying out terrorist attacks and criminal attacks either directly or through its militias.”
Nuclear experts say that although 90% uranium enrichment is generally required to make a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon could technically be produced at much lower levels of enrichment, and the shift from 20 to 90% enrichment is, in any case, hardly a quantum leap.