WarSclerotic

The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog confirmed Monday that Iran has enriched uranium at a level higher than the limit set in a 2015 international pact.

Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on July 8, “verified that Iran is enriching uranium above 3.67 percent U-235,” the IAEA said in a statement, hours after Tehran said it had exceeded the agreed cap and reached 4.5% enrichment in response to the United States withdrawing from the deal.

The Iranian violations of the 2015 agreement are to be the subject of an extraordinary meeting of the governors of the IAEA at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday.

Iran also said it would consider going to 20% or higher, rapidly bringing its program closer to weapons-grade levels.

Iranian nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi confirmed in a state television interview that Iran had surpassed the 3.67% enrichment cap set by the faltering deal.

Iran’s uranium conversion facility near Isfahan, which reprocesses uranium ore concentrate into uranium hexafluoride gas, which is then taken to Natanz and fed into the centrifuges for enrichment, March 30, 2005. (AP/ Vahid Salemi)

“This morning Iran passed the 4.5% level in uranium enrichment,” Kamalvandi said, according to the semi-official ISNA News Agency. “This level of purity completely satisfies the power plant fuel requirements of the country.”

He said the next and third stage in abandoning the agreement could be increasing uranium enrichment to 20% or more. That would worry nuclear nonproliferation experts, as 20% is a short technical step away from reaching weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Behrouz also suggested Iran could use new or more centrifuges, which are also limited by the deal.

He said Iran surpassed the 3.67% cap on Sunday, after waiting a year for the other parties in the agreement to honor their commitments in the wake of the American pullout from the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Iran “was trying right now to cross the line… They are trying to signal through small steps that they will move towards a bomb… It will take them a few years if they want that, and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv. June 27, 2018. (Tomer Neuberg/FLASH90)

Speaking during a live Q&A session on Facebook, the prime minister said “The big question is not what our policy is, because nothing has changed there,” and called on European leaders to enact sanctions on Tehran.

He also asserted that it was thanks to his actions on the world stage that Iran did not have “100 nuclear bombs by now.”

Later Monday, he called for the international community to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

“They attack tankers, they down American drones, they’re firing missiles at their neighbors. It’s important to respond to these actions not by reducing the pressure, but by increasing the pressure,” he told Pastor John Hagee by video link at the Christians United For Israel Conference.

The future of the pact has been in doubt since US President Donald Trump unilaterally exited a year ago, and reimposed the harsh sanctions that the deal had lifted.

While Iran’s recent measures to increase enrichment and break its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit could be easily reversed, Europe has struggled to respond, even after getting a 60-day warning that the increase was coming.

Under the nuclear deal, the cap for enrichment was set at 3.67%, a percentage closely monitored by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog. The IAEA said it was waiting for a report from its inspectors before commenting on Iran’s move.

The decision to ramp up uranium enrichment purity came less than a week after Iran acknowledged breaking the deal’s 300-kilogram (661-pound) limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile. Experts warn higher enrichment and a growing stockpile could begin to narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material for an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said his country remained open to diplomacy to save the agreement, though it had “no hope” that the international community could salvage the deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday to discuss Syria, Iran and other issues, according to statements from the two leaders’ offices.

The Russian statement said Putin invited Netanyahu to Moscow to participate in “celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” or World War II. The day will be marked in Russia on May 9, 2020.

The call was initiated by Netanyahu, who took the opportunity to express condolences for the deaths of 14 Russian sailors, seven of them senior officers, in a submarine fire in the Barents Sea on July 1.

The Russian statement said the two discussed “Russian-Israeli cooperation on the Syria issue” following up on the trilateral meeting of national security advisers from Russia, Israel and the United States on June 25 — “in particular, the importance of further coordination between militaries.”

A short statement from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem stated that the two men discussed “Iran, Syria, and relations between the countries.”

The phone call came as Iran announced that it would consider going to 20 percent or higher uranium enrichment as its next step in rolling back the commitments it made under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, rapidly bringing its program closer to weapons-grade levels.

Nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi confirmed in a state television interview Monday that Iran had surpassed the 3.67% enrichment cap set by the faltering deal. That development came a day after Iran announced that it would soon push past the 3.67% limit and possibly enrich uranium to any purity it desired.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US national security adviser John Bolton (second left), Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council (right) and Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat (left) pose for a picture at a trilateral meeting at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem on June 25, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton\Flash90)

The June 25 trilateral conference of Israeli, Russian, and US national security advisers was the first event of its kind to be held in Jerusalem and, according to Israel, was aimed specifically at countering Iran, including both its nuclear aspirations and its influence throughout the Middle East.

At the meeting, Russia’s national security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, spoke out on behalf of Iran, backing Tehran’s claims against the United States and supporting the Islamic Republic’s ongoing military presence in Syria, which Israel sees as a threat to its security.

Netanyahu told Patrushev ahead of the meeting that “Israel won’t allow an Iran that calls for our annihilation to entrench itself on our border, and we will do anything it takes to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Israel has long sought Russian backing for its demand that Iranian forces leave Syria upon the conclusion of the country’s civil war. Iran and its military proxies are helping the Syrian regime end the civil war but Israel is concerned that Tehran is using the opportunity to establish forward bases in Syria from which to attack the Jewish state.

Israel has vowed to prevent the entrenchment and has carried out numerous airstrikes in Syria against alleged Iran-linked military targets.

Russia, which maintains close ties to both Israel and Iran, is seen as a potential interlocutor between the West and Tehran.

Iran on Monday said it would consider going to 20 percent or higher uranium enrichment as its next step in rolling back the commitments it made under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, rapidly bringing its program closer to weapons-grade levels.

Nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi confirmed in a state television interview that Iran had surpassed the 3.67% enrichment cap set by the faltering deal.

“This morning Iran passed the 4.5% level in uranium enrichment,” Kamalvandi said, according to the semi-official ISNA News Agency. “This level of purity completely satisfies the power plant fuel requirements of the country.”

He said the next and third stage in abandoning the agreement could be increasing uranium enrichment to 20% or more. That would worry nuclear nonproliferation experts, as 20% is a short technical step away from reaching weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Behrouz also suggested Iran could use new or more centrifuges, which are also limited by the deal.

He said Iran surpassed the 3.67% cap on Sunday after waiting a year for the other parties in the agreement to honor their commitments in the wake of the American pullout from the deal.

Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi answers the press in the capital Tehran on July 17, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / ATTA KENARE)

The future of the pact has been in doubt since US President Donald Trump unilaterally exited a year ago and reimposed the harsh sanctions the deal had lifted.

While Iran’s recent measures to increase enrichment and break its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit could be easily reversed, Europe has struggled to respond, even after getting a 60-day warning that the increase was coming.

Under the nuclear deal, the cap for enrichment was set at 3.67%, a percentage closely monitored by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog. The IAEA said it was waiting for a report from its inspectors before commenting on Iran’s move.

The decision to ramp up uranium enrichment purity came less than a week after Iran acknowledged breaking the deal’s 300-kilogram (661-pound) limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile. Experts warn higher enrichment and a growing stockpile could begin to narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material for an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

File: An Iranian worker at the Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan, 410 kilometers south of Tehran, January 2014. (AP /Vahid Salemi)

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said his country remained open to diplomacy to save the agreement, though it had “no hope” that the international community could salvage the deal.

Abbas Mousavi said Iran appreciated the efforts of some nations to save the deal, but offered a jaded tone on whether Tehran trusted anyone in the negotiations.

“We have no hope nor trust in anyone nor any country but the door of diplomacy is open,” Mousavi said.

He also gave a sharp, yet unelaborated warning to Europe about another 60-day deadline Iran set Sunday. That deadline will come September 5.

“If the remaining countries in the deal, especially the Europeans, do not fulfill their commitments seriously, and not do anything more than talk, Iran’s third step will be harder, more steadfast and somehow stunning,” he said.

A top Iranian general said on Sunday that the United States conveyed to the Islamic Republic through an unnamed third party last month that it would carry out limited strikes to retaliate for the downing of its drone.

“After the downing of its intruding drone, the United States told us through diplomatic intermediaries that it wanted to carry out a limited operation,” said Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization and senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

“But Iran’s response was that we regard every operation as the beginning of the war,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Last month, Trump declared that “Iran made a very big mistake” by shooting down the US drone over the Strait of Hormuz. But he also suggested that shooting down the drone was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation of the tensions.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The US military made preparations on June 21 for limited strikes on Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone — which Washington insists was over international waters but Tehran says was within its airspace — but approval was abruptly withdrawn before the attacks were launched.

Trump later said the US was “cocked and loaded” to retaliate against Iran, but canceled the strikes 10 minutes before they were to be carried out after being told some 150 people could die.

“I didn’t think it was proportionate,” he said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.

Reuters reported at the time that Trump had urged Iran to come to the table to hold talks in a message conveyed through Oman, and warned that a US strike against the Islamic Republic in response to the drone incident could be imminent.

The aborted attack was the closest the US has come to a direct military strike on Iran in the year since the administration pulled out of the 2015 international agreement intended to curb the Iranian nuclear program and launched a campaign of increasing economic pressure against the Islamic Republic.

A year after Trump pulled the US from the deal, Iran already has broken through the limit the deal put on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. On Sunday, officials announced they would enrich beyond its 3.67 percent limit “in a few hours.”

All this comes as America has rushed thousands of troops, an aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and advanced fighter jets to the Mideast. Mysterious oil tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz that the US and Israel blamed on Iran, attacks by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen on Saudi Arabia and Iran shooting down a US military drone have raised fears of a wider conflict engulfing the region.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday likened Iran’s “dangerous” flouting of the nuclear deal to the Nazis occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, in a call for European countries to sanction the Islamic Republic over its ramped-up uranium enrichment.

Iran said Sunday it was set to breach the uranium enrichment cap set by the 2015 nuclear accord within hours as it seeks to press signatories into keeping their side of the bargain. The Islamic Republic also threatened to abandon more commitments unless a solution is found with parties to the agreement.

The move to start enriching uranium above the agreed maximum purification level of 3.67 percent comes despite opposition from the European Union and the United States, which has quit the deal.

“This is a very dangerous step and I am urging my friends, the leaders of France, Britain, Germany: You signed this deal, and you said the moment this step would be taken, there would be harsh sanctions… Where are you?” said Netanyahu at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, listens to his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif prior to a meeting in Tehran, Iran, November 24, 2015. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

Accusing Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons, the prime minister compared the stepped-up enrichment to the Nazis’ first act of military aggression.

“I discussed this morning…  how World War II began in Europe. It began when Nazi Germany took one small step, reentering the Rhineland. It was a small step, no one said anything and no one did anything. The next step was the Anschluss… and the step after that was the entry into Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The rest is known,” Netanyahu said.

Turning to Europe, he appealed to his allies to respond with economic penalties.

“I’m asking you — not to provoke, but out of joint knowledge of history and what happens when aggressive totalitarian regimes can cross the threshold toward things that are very dangerous to us all — take the steps that you promised. Enact the sanctions.

“We’re doing our part. We are always fighting Iranian aggression, we aren’t allowing it to entrench [militarily] in Syria. We are acting, trying to nip it in the bud,” added Netanyahu, urging EU countries to do their part.

Netanyahu’s comments came as French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said Paris would not seek to trigger the nuclear deal’s so-called dispute resolution mechanism, which sets off a series of negotiations that could end with reimposed UN sanctions on Iran within 65 days.

“It’s not an option at this moment,” a source in Macron’s office told Reuters.

Macron said Saturday he is trying to find a way by July 15 to resume dialogue between Iran and Western partners. Macron’s office said in a statement that the French leader spoke for more than an hour Saturday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani amid a standoff between Tehran and the US.

French President Emmanuel Macron during a media conference at the end of an EU summit in Brussels on June 21, 2019. (AP/Riccardo Pareggiani)

Macron expressed “strong concern about new weakening” of the 2015 accord aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He said they would “explore between now and July 15 conditions for resumed dialogue among all parties.” The statement didn’t elaborate.

The 2015 deal was reached between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, the United States and Russia — and saw Tehran agree to drastically scale down its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Washington began reimposing sanctions in August 2018 and has targeted crucial sectors including oil exports and the banking system, fueling a deep recession.

It is not yet clear how far the Islamic Republic will boost enrichment.

But a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hinted on Friday it could reach five percent.

Spokesperson Behrooz Kamalvandi said Sunday that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization was fully ready to enrich uranium “at any amount and at any level” if ordered to do so.

The 3.67 percent enrichment limit set in the agreement is sufficient for power generation but far below the more than 90 percent level required for a nuclear warhead.