The United States demanded that the Iranian regime cease its nuclear provocations

The United States found this Tuesday “worrying” that Iran is moving further and further away from its nuclear commitments and called on the country to end its “provocations”.

“It is worrying that Iran has chosen to escalate,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “We continue to call on Iran to end its provocations,” he said.

For its part, European countries expressed “serious concern” on Tuesday after Iran announced it would increase uranium enrichment, saying this undermines the Vienna negotiations, aimed at relaunching the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

“With its final steps, Iran threatens a positive outcome of the Vienna talks, despite the progress made in the six rounds of negotiations so far,” the foreign ministries of France, the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom said. Germany in a joint statement.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said shortly before that Iran intends to “produce uranium metal with an enrichment rate of 20%”.

Tehran, which gradually ended its commitments after the United States withdrew from the pact in 2018, started production of uranium metal for research in February, a sensitive issue since this element can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Iran now wants to move to a higher level of enrichment, “a multi-step process” that will take place at its plant in Isfahan. (center), according to the IAEA press release sent to AFP. Their goal is to “make fuel” to power Tehran’s research reactor.

“Iran has no credible civilian need to continue its uranium metal production or R&D activities, which are a key step in the development of a nuclear weapon.“, Believe the Europeans in the press release.

The director general of this UN body, Rafael Grossi, informed the member countries of this novelty, which comes in a complicated context.

The negotiations in Vienna, which began in April, have stalled and, according to a European diplomat consulted by AFP, “they will not resume this week”.

These talks aim to get the United States back to the agreement reached in 2015 in the Austrian capital and they come weeks before Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, takes office in August.

The pact allowed Iran to be relieved of Western and UN sanctions in exchange for a pledge not to make an atomic bomb and to reduce its nuclear program.

But former US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his country and reimpose sanctions undermined the plan. Tehran then gave up most of its commitments.

(With information from AFP)

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