Iran will announce on Wednesday it is scaling back its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, a year after the US decision to unilaterally pull out of the international pact, the official IRNA news agency said.
The announcement came as tensions with the US have been ramping up, and could include Iran restarting enrichment at nuclear facilities where activity was curbed by the 2015 deal.
“In response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States (…), the Islamic Republic of Iran will announce Wednesday its decision to reduce its commitments under this agreement,” the agency said Tuesday.
A French diplomatic source told Reuters that if Iran withdraws from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, then Europe would reimpose sanctions on the country.
“We do not want Tehran to announce tomorrow actions that would violate the nuclear agreement, because in this case we Europeans would be obliged to reimpose sanctions as per the terms of the agreement. We don’t want that and we hope that the Iranians will not make this decision,” the source said.
The hard-line Javad newspaper, associated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, suggested in its Tuesday edition that Iran may install advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility and begin enrichment at its Fordo facility, activities prohibited under the nuclear deal.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani is expected to announce new measures Wednesday, which the newspaper predicted would “ignite the matchstick for burning the deal.”
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in February that Tehran has begun “preliminary activities for designing” a modern process for 20-percent uranium enrichment. Restarting enrichment at that level would mean Iran had withdrawn from the 2015 nuclear deal.
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