War, Rumours and Threats: Iran enriching five (5) kilograms uranium a day since abandoning nuclear deal from five (5) years ago. More than 10 (5+5) times the level from just two months ago. Five (5) countries.

Iran has ramped up its nuclear activities in recent months

Date of publication: 4 November, 2019. New Arab.

Iran said on Monday it is enriching five kilogrammes of uranium per day, more than 10 times the level two months ago when Tehran abandoned a number of commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran announced at the Natanz nuclear facility that it has now developed two new advanced centrifuges, one of which is undergoing testing.

Salehi said Iranian engineers “have successfully built a prototype of IR-9, which is our newest machine, and also a model of a new machine called IR-s… all these in two months”.

Iran has removed all of its nuclear deal-approved IR-1 centrifuges and is only using advanced machines, leading to the sharp increase in enriched uranium production, he added.

“We must thank the enemy for bringing about this opportunity to show the might of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially in the nuclear industry,” Salehi said.

“This is while some say (Iran’s) nuclear industry was destroyed!” he said, laughing.

Iran has ramped up uranium production after the US pulled out of a nuclear deal in 2018 and enacted tough sanctions on Tehran.

Despite this, the EU have said they want to continue to cooperate with Iran on the nuclear issue.

Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said Monday that the [nuclear] deal “is a matter of our security, not just the region or Europe but globally”. 

But she says the EU’s commitment to the deal “depends on the full compliance by Iran”.

Iran has so far hit back with three packages of countermeasures and threatened to go even further if the remaining partners to the deal – the UK, China, France, Germany and Russia – fail to help it circumvent US sanctions.

On 1 July, Iran said it had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to beyond a 300-kilo maximum set by the deal, and a week later, it announced it had exceeded a 3.67-percent cap on the purity of its uranium stocks.

Tehran fired up advanced centrifuges to boost its enriched uranium stockpiles on 7 September