Iran has initiated the process to produce 20% enriched uranium in the Fordo underground plant, well above the threshold set by the 2015 international agreement, the television reported on Monday (January 4th). State quoting the government spokesperson.
Read also: Six months to review the Iran nuclear deal
“
The process to produce 20% enriched uranium has started at the Shahid Alimohammadi (Fordo) enrichment complex
,” located 180 kilometers south of Tehran, spokesman Ali Rabii said on the website. of state television.
In a letter dated December 31, Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its desire to produce uranium enriched to 20%.
According to the latest report available from the UN agency, published in November, Tehran enriched uranium to a degree of purity higher than the limit provided for in the 2015 agreement (3.67%) but did not exceed 4.5% threshold, and still complied with the Agency's very strict inspection regime.
But the case has been experiencing turmoil since the assassination at the end of November of an Iranian nuclear physicist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
To read also: Iran: the nuclear physicist would have been killed by a machine gun controlled by satellite
In the wake of this attack attributed by Iran to Israel, the Iranian parliament passed a controversial law calling for the production and storage of "at
least 120 kilograms per year of 20% enriched uranium
" and to "
end
" inspections. of the IAEA, intended to verify that the country does not seek to acquire the atomic bomb.
The Iranian government was opposed to this initiative denounced by the other signatories of the 2015 agreement, who had called in December Tehran not to "
compromise the future
".
From May 2019, Iran had already started to free itself from the main commitments made under the Vienna agreement intended to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against it.
This disengagement began a year after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from these agreements, followed by the return of heavy American sanctions which deprived Iran of the expected fallout from the agreement.
