Tehran, Nov. 3, (dpa/GNA) – Iran’s scientists have been asked to enrich uranium to a level of 20 per cent, the country’s legislature decided on Monday, a 15-percentage-point increase and a potentially provocative move a day before US elections.
Currently, Iran is enriching its uranium to a level of just under 5 per cent, even though a 2015 international agreement limits it to 3.67 per cent. An enrichment level of about 90 per cent is needed to create an atomic bomb.
But the new law would allow annual production of 120 kilograms at the 20-per-cent level, reported the Tasnim news agency. The country’s atomic agency would also be authorized to produce 500 kilograms of less-enriched uranium a month.
Under the law, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) is also instructed to facilitate the creation of faster centrifuges so that they can be put to use in at least two facilities.
However, it seems unlikely that the new law will mean much of a change for Iranian nuclear policy, since the country’s security council, not parliament, sets policy for atomic programmes. The vote is more likely a symbolic move by a legislature controlled by hardliners to show that the country refuses to let outsiders control its nuclear efforts.
A 2015 agreement between Iran and other countries required it to limit production to low-enriched uranium, good for only civil purposes, in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
But after US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal, Iran said it no longer feels bound by the agreement. Since then, it has violated the limitations set down several times.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran began hitting the 5-per-cent enrichment level in the last few months and has begun stockpiling. The approximately 1.5 tons it has are about eight times what it is allowed under the 2015 deal, the IAEA says.
There are also reports that Iran is working on a new underground atomic facility.
GNA