Global Geo-political Series: Iran makes ‘Uranium enrichment’ threat as deal deadline looms

In response to President Trump’s defiance to certify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as Iran nuclear agreement, On Monday Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, has warned that Tehran may reconsider its cooperation agreement with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International AEA, should the US default on its commitments to the 2015 Iranian deal. Iran has toughened its stance towards the agreement after it successfully thwarted a nationwide protest against the government over economic stagnation, social reforms and political injustice. Iran’s supreme leader blamed foreign influence for the protest. The comments came as the nuclear deal deadline looms.

In 2015, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as Iran nuclear agreement with the United States and other five world powers; Russia, China, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. However, President Trump repeatedly called the nuclear agreement as one of the worst deals ever made and in October refused to recertify Iran’s compliance with the agreement. Trump needs to decide by mid-January whether to prolong the waivers on American sanctions against Iran’s oil exports under the nuclear deal or not.  And if he fails to sign the waivers, which needed to be extended every 120 days, the restrictions on Iran will be automatically re-imposed.

On Wednesday, Iran toughened its communications in order to persuade the U.S President in signing the waivers and to pressure other world leaders to weigh on Trump. Iran’s atomic energy agency said on Wednesday that a re-imposition of sanctions by the US would be a violation of the nuclear deal with world powers. According to Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country would take necessary actions such as speeding up the enrichment if the suspension is not continued, “the capacity to greatly increase its enrichment of uranium….The capacity exists within the atomic energy agency to speed up nuclear work in various fields, particularly in the field of enrichment, which can be increased several times more than in the period before the nuclear agreement,”