Iran announced that it would be taking steps toward producing uranium metal, in direct violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, reports the Times of Israel.
The revelation came only days after Tehran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent purity at the underground Fordo facility. According to the JCPOA, Iran can enrich uranium only up to 3.67% until 2030.
But although the latest breaches advance Iran’s nuclear program, for now they are not an indication that Iran intends to exit the JCPOA or move toward a nuclear weapon, analysts believe.
Experts acknowledge the difficulty in determining how alarmed regional and world powers should be about the latest Iranian move. “There is a legitimate civilian use” for uranium metal, Jeffrey Lewis, nonproliferation scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told The Times of Israel.
Potential civilian uses for uranium metal include metal rods in nuclear reactors. However, most reactors use other types of solids for their fuel, emphasized Joab Rosenberg, former deputy head analyst in the Israel Defense Force’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
For that reason, said Rosenberg, producing uranium metal is “one of the most indicative moves” that a country is working toward nuclear weapons capability.
Regardless of the intended use of the uranium metal project, there is no question that Tehran is violating the JCPOA. The timing has to do with the change of administration in the United States, according to Rosenberg.
“They want to put Biden under pressure, and to give him as many excuses as possible to go back into the agreement quickly,” said Rosenberg. “The more they push away from the treaty, the more it will make sense for the French and the Russians and the Germans to push Biden to go back before it’s too late.”
Calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” US president Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, reimposing crippling sanctions on Iran.
Since the Trump administration left the deal, Iran has been slowly breaching its terms.
US President-elect Joe Biden has promised to re-enter the JCPOA. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal,” wrote then-candidate Biden in September, “the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”
Upcoming presidential elections in June loom over the nuclear debate in Iran.
The current Iranian government’s primary goal is to get sanctions removed by returning to JCPOA compliance, but it does have two red lines. It refuses to return to full compliance as long as the US continues sanctions, and it won’t revisit the terms of the agreement under these circumstances.
