DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iran began enriching uranium to unseen levels on Monday since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and also seized a South Korean flagged tanker near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, a double challenge for it. West that further increased tensions in the Middle East.
Both decisions appeared to be aimed at increasing Tehran’s influence in the waning days in office of President Donald Trump, whose unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal started a series of escalating incidents in 2018.
Increasing enrichment at its underground Fordo facility places Tehran a technical step away from a weapons quality level of 90%, while also pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to negotiate quickly. Iran’s seizure of MT Hankuk Chemi is because a South Korean diplomat is said to be traveling to the Islamic Republic to discuss the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets now frozen in Seoul.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appeared to recognize that Tehran is interested in exploiting the situation in a tweet about its nuclear enrichment.
“Our measures are fully reversible with FULL compliance by ALL,” he wrote.
At Fordo, Iranian nuclear scientists under the supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors loaded centrifuges containing more than 130 kilograms (285 pounds) of low-enriched uranium to spin up to 20%, said Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative at the UN nuclear agency. .
The IAEA later described the Fordo setup as three sets of two interconnected cascades, consisting of 1044 IR-1 centrifuges – Iran’s first-generation centrifuges. A cascade is a group of centrifuges that work together to enrich uranium more quickly.
Iranian state television quoted government spokesman Ali Rabiei as saying that President Hassan Rouhani had ordered production to begin. It came after parliament passed a bill, later approved by a constitutional watchdog, aimed at increasing enrichment to pressure Europe to ease sanctions.
Iran’s decision to begin enriching to 20% purity a decade ago nearly led to an Israeli attack against its nuclear facilities, tensions that only eased with the 2015 nuclear deal, in which Iran limited its enrichment in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.
A resumption of 20% enrichment could return that brinksmanship. A November attack that Tehran blames Israel has already killed an Iranian scientist who founded the country’s military nuclear program two decades earlier.
Of Israel, which has its own undeclared nuclear weapons program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Iran’s enrichment decision, saying it “cannot be explained in any way other than the continuation of realizing its goal of becoming a military nuclear weapon. program. “
Israel will not allow Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon, he added.
Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful. Just last year, the US State Department said it “continued to assess that Iran is currently not involved in significant activities related to the design and development of a nuclear weapon.” That echoes previous reports from US intelligence and the IAEA, although experts warn that Iran currently has enough low-enriched uranium for at least two nuclear weapons if it chooses to pursue them.
Iran informed the IAEA last week that it planned to increase enrichment to 20%.
Meanwhile, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard confiscated MT Hankuk Chemi, and later photos were released showing the ships next to the tanker. Satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed the tanker off the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas Monday.
The ship was en route from a petrochemical plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. According to data analysis company Refinitiv, the ship is carrying a cargo of chemicals, including methanol.
Iran claimed it had confiscated the ship allegedly polluting the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the gulf’s narrow mouth through which 20% of the world’s oil flows.
Calls to the listed vessel owner, DM Shipping Co. Ltd. from Busan, South Korea, were not answered after office hours on Monday. South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted an anonymous company official as denying Iran’s claim that the ship contaminated the water.
The captain “asked why we should go to be examined and received no answer,” Yonhap quoted the official as saying.
In recent months, Iran has been trying to increase pressure on South Korea to release about $ 7 billion in frozen assets from the oil sales earned before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded the release of the ship, saying in a statement that the crew was safe. The crew included sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam, the Garde said. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it also sent its anti-piracy unit to the Strait of Hormuz, a 4,400-ton destroyer with about 300 troops.
Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the United States Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, said authorities there were aware and were monitoring the situation. Last year, Iran similarly seized a British-flagged oil tanker and detained it for months after one of its tankers was detained off Gibraltar.
The incidents coincide with the anniversary of the US drone strike that killed Guard General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles on US bases in Iraq, injuring dozens of US troops. Tehran also accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane that night, killing all 176 people on board.
As the anniversary approached and fears of possible Iranian retaliation grew, the US sent B-52 bombers over the region and ordered a nuclear-powered submarine into the Persian Gulf.
Acting United States Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said late on Sunday that he had changed his mind about sending the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz home from the Middle East and instead keeping the ship in service. He cited Iranian threats against Trump and other US government officials as the reason for the reshuffle, without elaborating.
Last week, sailors discovered a limpet mine trapped on a tanker in the Persian Gulf off Iraq near the Iranian border as it prepared to transfer fuel to another tanker owned by a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange . No one has claimed responsibility for the mining, although it comes after a series of similar attacks in 2019 near the Strait of Hormuz that the US Navy blamed on Iran. Tehran denied involvement.
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Associated Press writers, Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, and Robert Burns in Washington, contributed.