Iran tells IAEA it will violate the nuclear pact by enriching uranium to 20%

Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it plans to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity, a level it reached before the historic 2015 nuclear agreement with six major powers.

"The Director General (Argentine Rafael Grossi) has informed the Board of Governors (of the IAEA) and the UN Security Council of Tehran's intentions to start enriching (uranium) to 20 %," wrote Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's representative to the UN nuclear agency, in a tweet.

This is the last of the decisions announced by Tehran that violate the nuclear agreement that Iran concluded in 2015 with the United States, China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Last December the Islamic Republic of Iran voted in favour of a bill imposing restrictions on international inspections in addition to increasing uranium enrichment to 20 percent. This marks an even greater step away from the 2015 nuclear pact, from which the United States withdrew in 2018, and therefore re-imposed economic sanctions on the country.

The proposal for this bill came shortly after the murder of the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fajrizadeh, considered one of the "fathers" of the nuclear programme. So the response of the executive, which blames Israel for the attack, was to increase spending on uranium.

Tehran began to fail to fulfil its obligations in retaliation for Washington's withdrawal from the pact and to put pressure on the European powers to comply with the expected economic advantages for Iran.

The 2015 treaty establishes a series of limitations on Iranian nuclear activities in order to prevent the Islamic Republic from building atomic weapons in exchange for commercial relief.

However, these benefits have been affected by the United States' sanctions, particularly against the Iranian oil sector.

Iran had already exceeded the 3.67 percent maximum purity limit for uranium established by the agreement, but only to 4.5 percent, well below the 20 percent it achieved shortly before the 2015 pact and the 90 percent required for a nuclear bomb.

Iran's failures, particularly this major advance in uranium purity, may hinder the efforts of US President-elect Joe Biden to get Washington to return to the agreement.