Iran adopts new measures to push the Europeans to respect JCPOA commitments

Tabnak – After the European parties of the 2015 nuclear deal failed to live up to their commitments on providing Iran with the economic benefits of the deal, Iran appears determined to continue revising its own commitments. The second phase of Iran’s actions in this regard was announced today.

In this vein, Iran says it is starting to enrich uranium to a higher purity than 3.67%, as the European signatories to a 2015 agreement with Tehran miss a 60-day deadline to offset the adverse impacts of a unilateral pullout by the United States.

Iran’s latest cut in its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was announced during a joint news conference by Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi, Administration spokesman Ali Rabiei, and Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), in Tehran on Sunday.

Kamalvandi said that Iran would increase uranium enrichment from the current 3.67% to the level that fulfills the needs of its power plants. He also noted that the country had not yet decided on the level of enrichment for the Tehran research reactor.

Araqchi said that the Europeans were yet to meet Iran’s demands, including regarding a non-dollar direct payment channel with Iran known as INSTEX but were also making certain efforts, indicating that those efforts could still bear fruit.

Araqchi also said that US President Donald Trump’s so-called maximum pressure campaign had failed.

The deputy Iranian foreign minister also noted that Iran was holding talks with Chinese and English officials regarding the redesign of Arak reactor, which the US had originally undertaken to carry out under the JCPOA. He said those talks were proceeding for now but added that Iran had the will and technology to redesign the reactor on its own if the talks failed to produce favorable results.

He also said Iran had planned out 60-day contingencies for every European failure to meet Iranian demands and could potentially ultimately scrap the deal altogether.

President Hassan Rouhani had warned on Wednesday that the second step of reduction in Iran’s commitments would take place on Sunday, saying, “On July 7, the level of (uranium) enrichment in Iran will not be 3.67 percent anymore, as we will abandon such a commitment and increase it (enrichment) to any amount that we need.”

Iran maintains that the new measures are not designed to harm the JCPOA, but to save the accord by creating a balance in the commitments.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, US, Britain, France, and Germany) on July 14, 2015, reached a conclusion over the text of the nuclear deal.

The accord took effect in January 2016 and was supposed to terminate all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran all at once, but its implementation was hampered by the US policies and its eventual withdrawal from the deal.