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Iran Breaches Critical Limit on Nuclear Fuel Under 2015 Deal Iran Breaches Critical Limit on Nuclear Fuel Set by 2015 Deal
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Iran has exceeded a key limitation on how much nuclear fuel it can possess under the 2015 international pact curbing its nuclear program, effectively declaring that it would no longer respect an agreement that President Trump abandoned more than a year ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Monday. WASHINGTON — Iran on Monday violated a key provision of the 2015 international accord to restrict its nuclear program and signaled that it would soon breach another as it seeks more leverage in its escalating confrontation with the United States.
The breach of the limitation, which restricted Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium to about 660 pounds, does not by itself give the country the material to produce a nuclear weapon. But it is the strongest signal yet that Iran is moving to abandon the limits and restore the far larger stockpile that took the United States and five other nations years to persuade Tehran to send abroad. International inspectors confirmed that Iran had exceeded a critical limit on how much nuclear fuel it can possess under the agreement, which President Trump abandoned more than a year ago. By itself, the move does not give Iran enough material to produce a single nuclear weapon, though it inches it in that direction.
The developments were first reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency, citing an “informed source.” Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister of Iran, was later quoted confirming the news, according to another semiofficial outlet, the Iranian Students’ News Agency, or ISNA. Hours later, Iran’s foreign minister said his nation now intended to begin enriching its nuclear fuel to a purer level, a provocative action that, depending on how far Tehran goes with it, could move the country closer to possessing fuel that with further processing could be used in a weapon.
The report from Fars said that representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency determined last week that Iran had passed the threshold, and a spokesman for the agency said on Monday that it had confirmed that the stockpile had surpassed the limit laid out in the deal. The moves completed a sharp shift in strategy for Iran, which for the past 14 months had continued to respect the terms of the complex deal it struck with the Obama administration, even after Mr. Trump reimposed sanctions in an effort to strangle Iran’s economy by driving its oil revenues to zero. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran signaled the change in approach in May, but Tehran did not actually breach a central element of the agreement until Monday.
It was unclear how much the action would escalate the tensions between Washington and Tehran after the downing of an American surveillance drone in June nearly resulted in military strikes. But while the moves appear to return Iran to its two-decade pursuit of the technology necessary to develop a nuclear arsenal, the real goal may have been to gain a diplomatic advantage for any future negotiations. Iranian leaders are betting they can force European countries, who were deeply critical of Mr. Trump’s scrapping of the nuclear deal, to deliver on promises to help compensate Tehran for the effects of American sanctions.
But it returns the focus to Iran’s two-decade pursuit of technology that could produce a nuclear weapon — exactly where it was before President Barack Obama and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran struck their deal four years ago. Mr. Trump, who has vowed that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon, told reporters that Iran was “playing with fire,” and in a statement the State Department criticized Iran’s moves as an effort “to extort the international community and threaten regional security.”
While the Trump administration had no immediate reaction to the announcement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that the United States would never allow Iran to get within one year of possessing enough fuel to produce a nuclear weapon. His special envoy for Iran, Brian H. Hook, has often said that under a new deal, the United States would insist on “zero enrichment for Iran.” The administration has insisted that Iran continue to abide by the 2015 deal’s terms, even though Mr. Trump was the first to repudiate it, imposing escalating sanctions that are spurring high inflation and deep budget cuts in Iran.
Iran has so far rejected beginning any negotiation, saying that the United States must first return to the 2015 agreement and comply with all of its terms. But the administration made no overt threats of military action. Iran’s bit-by-bit violations of the accord are all reversible, and it is not clear how much either side wants to further escalate given that tensions have already been running high after the downing of an American surveillance drone by Iran last month nearly resulted in military strikes.
“Now the inevitable escalation cycle seems well underway,” Philip H. Gordon, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Obama administration national security official, wrote in an article this spring for Foreign Affairs magazine shortly after Mr. Rouhani telegraphed that he intended to walk away from the deal’s restrictions. Iran was on a “slippery slope” to fully pulling out of the agreement, Mr. Gordon added. Iran’s moves nonetheless brought expressions of concern from American allies, some of whom fear Washington and Tehran are on a collision course.
[Now that Iran has passed its nuclear fuel limit, what happens next?] “Deeply worried by Iran’s announcement that it has broken existing nuclear deal obligations,” Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign minister and a contender for prime minister, said in a tweet. He said that Britain “remains committed to making deal work & using all diplomatic tools.”
On June 28, after meeting in Vienna with European officials who had promised to set up a barter system with Iran to compensate for the effects of American sanctions that Britain, France and Germany say are unwise, Iranian officials said the effort was insufficient. Mr. Hook has estimated the sanctions have cost Iran $50 billion in lost oil sales, far more than the system the Europeans are putting in place would generate. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who lobbied Congress hard to defeat the deal four years ago, put the move in far more dire terms.
As they left the meeting, Iranian officials hinted that the breaking of the limit would go forward, though it could just as easily be reversed in the future. “Iran is taking a significant step toward producing nuclear weapons,” he said at a ceremony honoring reserve units of the Israel Defense Forces. “Israel will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.”
For now, however, Iran seems on a pathway to step-by-step dissolution of key parts of the accord. Mr. Rouhani has said that Iran will begin raising the level of uranium enrichment this month. He urged Europe to impose “snapback” sanctions against Iran, under provisions that were written into the arrangement to deal with violations.
“Deeply worried by Iran’s announcement that it has broken existing nuclear deal obligations. UK remains committed to making deal work & using all diplomatic tools to deescalate regional tensions,” said Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign minister, on Twitter. He urged Iran to avoid any further steps away from the 2015 nuclear agreement and to “come back into compliance.” But European officials have long argued that Mr. Trump essentially pushed the Iranians into the violations, and they are likely to be divided on the question of whether to pursue sanctions that would most likely terminate the arrangement entirely. The Iranians argue that they are under no obligations to adhere to the deal’s terms since Mr. Trump abandoned the pact.
It is possible that exceeding the stockpile limit is largely a negotiating tactic, a way for Tehran to impose costs on Washington after enduring more than a year of sanctions. But the move is risky. Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who negotiated the deal with the secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, are betting that the Europeans will declare that Mr. Trump, not Iran, is responsible for the collapse of the nuclear accord. “The E.U. remains fully committed to the agreement as long as Iran continues to fully implement its nuclear commitments,” said Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for the European Union, adding that Iran had complied with the deal for 14 months after the United States’ withdrawal. “We urge Iran to reverse this step and to refrain from further measures that undermine the nuclear deal,” she said.
That may prove the case. European officials, in their most vivid split from Mr. Trump, are scrambling to preserve the agreement, fearful that if it falls apart, the United States and Iran could be headed toward military conflict — and perhaps war. The 2015 agreement with Iran was negotiated by the United States under President Barack Obama along with Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The European powers have been trying to keep Iran in the deal even after the withdrawal of the United States, but negotiations on a possible agreement for Europe to help Iran financially by coming up with a workaround to some American sanctions ended inconclusively last week.
But a section of the pact allows the Europeans to invoke a so-called snapback of sanctions if Iran violates the terms. The Iranians say they are within their rights because the reimposition of sanctions last year by the United States gave them the grounds to halt their commitments, as well. The breach of the limit on how much nuclear fuel Iran can possess restricted its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to about 660 pounds. The decision was the strongest warning yet that Iran may be willing to rebuild the far larger stockpile that it agreed to send abroad under the deal.
For advocates of the 2015 deal, like former members of the Obama administration, Mr. Trump pushed Iran into the announcement. Among the recently imposed sanctions was one that threatened action against any country that bought low-enriched uranium from Tehran. To comply with the stockpile limits, Iran shipped low-enriched uranium to Russia in return for natural uranium. With that exchange now barred, it was only a matter of time before Iran exceeded the limits. Shortly after Iranian news agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran had exceeded the stockpile limit, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the country’s foreign minister and the man who negotiated the agreement with the Obama administration, said Iran would now turn to enriching the nuclear fuel.
Even before the announcement, the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence agencies — led by the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency — were beginning to review what steps to take if the president determined that Iran was getting too close to producing a bomb. “Our next step will be enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent allowed under the deal,” he said, according to a state-run Iranian broadcaster. He blamed the Europeans, who he said “have failed to fulfill their promises of protecting Iran’s interests” by compensating for billions of dollars in losses to the Iranian economy caused by the American sanctions.
A decade ago, the Obama administration conducted a highly classified cyberattack, code-named Olympic Games, at the Natanz enrichment site. The breach neutralized Iran’s centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium, and destroyed about 1,000 of the 5,000 machines then in operation. But after two years, Iran rebounded, and when the nuclear accord came into effect, it had more than 17,000 centrifuges, most of which were dismantled under the agreement. The enrichment level limit in the 2015 deal was set to assure that Iran’s small amount of fuel could be useful only in producing nuclear energy, not a bomb. Higher enrichment levels take Iran closer to making the kind of material needed for a bomb — which requires something closer to 90 percent purity.
If the United States targets Iran’s uranium enrichment operations, experts say, it is likely to take aim again at the Natanz site. But this time, the Iranians appear far better prepared. Other major nuclear sites, including the primary production facility for converting raw uranium to a gas form, and factories that produce next-generation centrifuges, are also likely targets, according to former officials. Iran has consistently denied that it has any intention of making a nuclear weapon, but a trove of nuclear-related documents, spirited out of a Tehran warehouse by Israeli agents last year, showed extensive work before 2003 to design a nuclear warhead.
In the weeks before the announcement, Saudi Arabia’s state news media has called for “surgical strikes” against Iran, as has Senator Tom Cotton, who pressed for military action after the downing of the drone. Mr. Trump initially agreed, then pulled back. Mr. Trump said last month that any effort by Iran to race to build a bomb might prompt him to take military action. But the move signaled by Iran on Monday fell far short of that threshold, and could have been intended to impress on the Europeans the importance of returning to negotiations over giving Tehran some relief from the sanctions.
But any operation against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, either with conventional arms or cyberweapons, would be highly risky. And some administration officials warn that acting now would be premature. Even if Iran possesses 800 or 900 kilograms of uranium, it would be insufficient for a single bomb. That threshold is not likely to be crossed until later this summer. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in May that the United States would never allow Iran to get within one year of possessing enough fuel to produce a nuclear weapon.
“If there is conflict, if there is war, if there is a kinetic activity, it will be because the Iranians made that choice,” Mr. Pompeo said last week during a visit to New Delhi. “I hope that they do not.” His special envoy for Iran, Brian H. Hook, has often said that under a new deal, the United States would insist on “zero enrichment for Iran.” Mr. Hook has estimated that the sanctions have cost Iran $50 billion in lost oil sales, far more than the system the Europeans are putting in place would generate.
Iran has so far rejected beginning any negotiation with Washington, saying that the United States must first return to the 2015 agreement and comply with all of its terms.
In fact, there is an argument to be made that Mr. Trump pushed Iran into exceeding the stockpile limit. Among the recently imposed sanctions was one that threatened action against any country that bought low-enriched uranium from Tehran. To comply with the stockpile limits, Iran shipped low-enriched uranium to Russia in return for natural uranium. With that exchange now barred, it was only a matter of time before Iran exceeded the limits.
Even before the announcement, the Pentagon and the United States’ intelligence agencies — led by the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency — were beginning to review what steps to take if the president determined that Iran was getting too close to producing a bomb.
But any operation against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, with either conventional arms or cyberweapons, would be highly risky. And some administration officials warn that acting now would be premature. Even if Iran possesses 800 or 900 kilograms of uranium, it would be insufficient for a single bomb. That threshold is not likely to be crossed until later this summer.