Iran’s Firm Response to Futile U.S. Move

TEHRAN – Iran has begun the process of feeding gas into cascades of new centrifuges as its top diplomat proposed a new round of negotiations in Vienna to restore the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with the West.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told state television Monday night that an order was given to begin feeding gas into “hundreds” of both first-generation IR-1 and advanced IR-6 machines.
He said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the move, which according to Kamalvandi is in line with a December 2020 parliament law that demanded increased uranium enrichment using advanced machines until such a time that unilateral United States sanctions are removed.
This came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said Tehran is reviewing a final proposed text by the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell last week to “conclude” negotiations that began in the Austrian capital in April 2021.
“We have announced our readiness so in a specified time the delegations of Iran, 4+1 and the U.S. – indirectly – can follow up on their talks in Vienna to pursue results,” Amir-Abdollahian said in reference to the nuclear-deal parties China, Russia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
The negotiations in Vienna to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is formally known, were put on “pause” in March after most issues were resolved, leaving only a handful of impactful points left that need to be decided politically.
But indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington have since stalled, and a two-day round of talks in Qatar in late June also concluded without progress.
For his part, the Iranian foreign minister on Monday reiterated that Tehran wants its “red lines” considered in a potential agreement, which he said could materialize if Washington shows “flexibility” and a “realistic” approach.
During a conference in New York on Monday aimed at reviewing the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said a restored JCPOA remains the “best outcome”.
The U.S. unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018 under former President Donald Trump, imposing harsh sanctions that have since been enforced and expanded upon by President Joe Biden.
The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on Monday to target Iran’s petrochemical exports, a move that Iran’s foreign ministry

denounced as a continuation of the “failed U.S. maximum pressure policy” and also because it came as dozens of Iranians have died as a result of flash floods across the country.

Tehran dismantled some cameras covered by the JCPOA in June after an anti-Iran resolution was put forward by the U.S., UK, France and Germany and was passed by the agency’s board of governors.

Amir-Abdollahian said on Tuesday that the decision to feed gas into cascades of new centrifuges was a response to the United States’ insane obsession with imposing new sanctions against the country.

“They need to put aside their excessive demands,” he said. “We are people of logic and dialogue and we are serious about reaching a strong agreement, but if the Americans want to continue on this path, our hands will not be tied.”

The foreign minister said the “irrational” and “insane” sanctions the U.S. has slapped on his country will not have an adverse effect on Iran’s progress.

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Iran’s Firm Response to Futile U.S. Move