Iran set to row back on pledges made in nuclear pact
IRAN vowed to scale back its compliance with nuclear commitments yesterday as regional tensions flared over last week’s tanker attack for which both the United States and the UK pointed the finger at Tehran.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation would today announce steps Tehran had taken to reduce its international obligations under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which is now in jeopardy.
The steps are likely to include moves to increase stocks of enriched uranium and the production of heavy water at the Arak nuclear complex, a site Iran has barred international watchdogs from visiting since 2008.
Both measures would nullify some of the key tenets of the nuclear accord, which offered economic incentives in exchange for the cessation of activities that might lead Tehran to build a nu- clear weapons capability.
The announcement was foreshadowed last month when Iran threatened to reduce its nuclear commitments if the international community failed to contain the impact of sanctions applied by Washington after the United States pulled out of the deal.
But the latest announcement appears to be a consequence of reactions to last Thursday’s tanker attacks.
Tehran denies any role in the explosions that ripped through two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, damaging the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous and the Norwegian-operated Front Altair.
The US military on Friday released video footage that it said showed an Iranian patrol boat removing an “unexploded limpet mine” from the Kokuka Courageous, which was carrying highly flammable methanol when it was hit by two blasts. According to the ship’s owner, crew on board noticed a “flying object” before the second blast.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, blamed Iran, citing “intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication”.
President Donald Trump said the attack had “Iran written all over it”.
The speaker of Iran’s parliament hit back yesterday, saying Washington could be to blame for the “suspicious” attacks.
Meanwhile, the US’S top Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, called on the international community to take a “decisive stance” against what Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman termed “expansionism” by his regional arch-rival. “We will not hesitate to deal with any threat to our people, our sovereignty and our vital interests,” the crown prince, the kingdom’s de facto leader, told a Saudi newspaper in an interview.
But Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, who was in Iran meeting with the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when the tankers were attacked, is understood to want more evidence. Mr Abe was in Tehran on an unprecedented goodwill mission, aimed at defusing tensions between Washington and the Islamic republic.
“Japan adamantly condemns the act that threatened a Japanese ship, no matter who attacked,” Mr Abe said, reiterating that Japan urged “all related countries” to avoid an accidental confrontation in the region.
But yesterday’s announcement from Iran’s nuclear agency has raised the tensions and the stakes.
Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, warned there was a “great risk” of escalation in the region. “Both sides in this dispute think that the other side wouldn’t want a war,” he said.
Tobias Ellwood, the defence minister, said yesterday that Britain would protect its assets in the Gulf as he warned Tehran against further aggression. “I understand the frustrations over the nuclear deal but that does not give licence to start attacking ships in the Straits of Hormuz,” he said.