Iran to stop following parts of nuclear deal
New restrictions imposed by Trump administration prompt announcement
Iran’s president announced Wednesday that the nation would stop complying with two provisions in the nuclear accord it signed with world powers.
Hassan Rouhani said Iran would reduce its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to new restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, part of a broader U.S. campaign to ratchet up economic and military pressure on Tehran. Iran’s declaration came on the oneyear anniversary of President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Rouhani said Iran will keep excess low-enriched uranium and “heavy water” from its nuclear program inside the country – as opposed to selling it internationally – in a move that effectively amounts to a partial breach of the deal.
The Trump administration said last
week it would sanction any country or business that purchased those products from Iran.
Rouhani set a 60-day deadline for new terms to the nuclear accord, absent negotiations with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union. He said that if those terms aren’t met, Iran will resume higher uranium enrichment, the process that creates nuclear fuel.
“We felt that the nuclear deal needs a surgery, and the painkiller pills of the last year have been ineffective,” Rouhani said in a nationally televised address. “This surgery is for saving the deal, not destroying it.”
American officials slapped yet more economic penalties on Iran Wednesday. The White House announced sanctions barring Iran from exporting iron, steel, aluminum and copper, which it said were the regime’s largest non-petroleum-related sources of export revenue.
Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran and senior policy adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Iran intends to expand its nuclear weapons program. “That is in defiance of international norms and yet another attempt by the regime at nuclear blackmail,” he said.
“The U.S. has tried to bring Iran to its knees with its maximum pressure campaign in a minimum amount of time, and for about a year, the Iranians demonstrated restraint and remained committed to their obligations under the nuclear deal,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the Crisis Group, a nonpartisan group focused on preventing conflict.
“But they have increasingly less to lose because the U.S. sanctions have effectively deprived them of all the benefits that the nuclear deal promised,” Vaez said.