Iran increasing nuke enrichment to 60%
ISTANBUL — Iran will begin enriching uranium to 60% purity, a top official said Tuesday, far exceeding its current level, in a move after an attack on one of its key nuclear sites, Iranian news agencies reported.
Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, as saying the country informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of plans to start 60% uranium enrichment.
The announcement puts Iran closer to weapons-grade levels of more than 90% enrichment and exceeds its current top level of 20%.
The move adds another major hurdle to negotiations to revive a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and six world powers.
Talks were set to reconvene in Vienna later this week between Tehran and the world powers, including the United States. Iran began breaching the accord after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018, reimposed the sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the agreement and added more than 1,500 additional measures in what his administration called a “maximum pressure” campaign to cripple the Iranian economy.
Iran, in response, increased enriched uranium from the 3.67% purity stipulated by the deal to 20%.
After an initial meeting last week, both Tehran and Washington characterized the negotiations — held indirectly, with European members of the deal shuttling between U.S. and Iranian delegations — as constructive. Iran has refused to meet directly with the United States.
Then came an attack on Sunday, which targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz and appeared to escalate a shadow war between Israel and Iran over the past several years. There were differing versions of how the attack was carried out, with reports of both a cyberattack and an explosion that destroyed power transmission and caused a fire. Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attack, which they said caused a blackout and damaged centrifuges.
Israel has not publicly commented.
As officials involved in the Vienna talks braced for Iran’s reaction, the Biden administration quickly said the United States had nothing to do with the incident.
In his comments Tuesday, Araghchi said another 1,000 centrifuges with 50% more capacity would be deployed at Natanz, in addition to the replacement of the damaged centrifuges.
Last week, as the Vienna talks got underway, an Iranian ship in the Red Sea was crippled by an explosion that Iranian officials said was caused by mines. Then came Sunday’s attack on the Natanz nuclear facility.
Iran’s announcement Tuesday drew immediate concern from European officials preparing to sit down again with Iranian negotiators later this week in Vienna. Talks that were planned for today were pushed back a day after a person in the E.U. entourage contracted covid-19.
A senior European diplomat familiar with the negotiations said the Iranian move was a major escalation that had the potential to derail the talks, since the intended level of enrichment strayed well into the realm of military use.
The nuclear deal allows Iran to enrich uranium only up to a 3.67% concentration of uranium-235, a fissile isotope, at Natanz, and to maintain a small stockpile of enriched uranium to use as fuel for its nuclear power reactors. Uranium enriched to 20% U-235 is suitable for use in an old, U.S.-supplied research reactor in Tehran that began operating in 1967.
Iran has repeatedly insisted that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful civilian purposes. On Tuesday, the U.S. intelligence community reported that Iran “is not currently undertaking” key activities necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. The finding, which was part of the intelligence agencies’ “Annual Threat Assessment,” affirmed earlier judgments by the spy agencies.