By Ali Arouzi and Saphora Smith - NBC News
TEHRAN -
Iran has resumed its uranium enrichment process by up to 20%
, government spokesman Ali Rabiee reported Monday to the state-run Mehr News, in the biggest violation of the historic nuclear deal with world powers.
Also on Monday, Iran's revolutionary guard seized a South Korean-flagged ship carrying thousands of tons of ethanol in the Persian Gulf, according to state news agencies IRIB and FARS News.
Increasing the enrichment of uranium purity
puts Iran within a technical step of enriching to 90%
, the level necessary to produce a nuclear warhead.
Before the announcement, Iran was enriching uranium by about 4.5%, in violation of the nuclear pact, but at a significantly lower level.
The news comes amid tensions between the United States and Iran
in the final days of the Donald Trump Administration, who unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, triggering a series of incidents that culminated in the assassination of the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3 last year in Iraq.
[US sees signs of possible Iranian attack on its forces in the Middle East]
The announcement of the enrichment and the seizure of the ship came the day after the first anniversary of Soleimani's assassination, prompting thousands of people to take to the streets to protest his death in Iraq on Sunday.
According to Iranian officials,
the enrichment is taking place at the Iranian nuclear facility of Fordo
, which is hidden on a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
Under the terms of the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran can only enrich uranium to around 3.5% and enrichment is not allowed at the Fordo plant.
Iran vows to avenge death of prominent scientist working on its nuclear program
Nov. 28, 202000: 27
The agreement stipulates that, in exchange for agreeing to limit its enrichment of uranium,
world powers will grant Iran relief from sanctions
.
Since the United States withdrew from the pact in May 2018 and re-imposed heavy sanctions on Iran, Tehran has consistently failed to honor its own commitments to the deal, sparking alarm among the other five parties to the deal: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China.
[Killed a key scientist in Iran's nuclear program with a bomb in his car]
Iran's decision comes after Parliament passed a bill aimed at increasing enrichment to pressure Europe to waive sanctions.
Uranium enriched up to 20% can be used to power nuclear reactors
, according to Eric Brewer, deputy director of the Nuclear Affairs Project at the Center for International Strategic Studies, a Washington DC think tank.
Iran has a research reactor that uses about 20% enriched uranium, but that fuel is provided by other countries under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, Brewer added.
It remains unclear what Iran plans to do with the richer uranium.
Tehran has long denied that it seeks to
develop a nuclear weapon,
saying doing so would be against Islam.
[Iran's Supreme Leader vows revenge for the murder of its top nuclear scientist]
The move also puts pressure on President-elect Joe Biden
, who was vice president when the United States entered the nuclear deal under the Barack Obama administration in 2015, has said he is willing to return to the pact if Iran complies with the deal and has suggested developing it.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani last month held back the possibility of expanding the scope of the deal, saying the country's ballistic missile program and its regional influence were non-negotiable.
"There is a JCPOA that has been negotiated and agreed,
" he said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal that is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
"Either everyone agrees to comply, or not," he added.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, informed member states on Monday that Iran began feeding uranium already enriched to 4.1% U-235 in six centrifugal cascades at the Fordo plant to further enrichment of up to 20%, the IAEA said in an emailed statement.
Iran had previously informed the agency of its intention to start producing up to 20% enriched uranium, he added.