‘Iran's Enrichment Push Is Adding To Nuke Deal Breach'

Report by UN atomic watchdog says nation enriching uranium at its underground site

Iran is enriching uranium at its underground Fordow site and rapidly accelerating enrichment more broadly, a report by the U.N. atomic watchdog showed on Monday, outlining Tehran’s latest breaches of its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.

Iran is overstepping the deal’s limits on its nuclear activities one after the other in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the accord last year and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled Iran’s oil trade. Tehran says it can quickly undo those breaches if those sanctions are removed.

In perhaps its most symbolic breach yet, Iran said last week it had begun refining uranium at Fordow, a site built inside a mountain apparently to protect it from any aerial bombardment, and one that Tehran concealed from U.N. inspectors until 2009.

The 2015 deal banned enrichment and nuclear materials there but allowed some centrifuges for research purposes.

“Since 9 November 2019, Iran has been conducting uranium enrichment at the plant,” said a quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is policing the deal, sent to its member states and viewed by Reuters.