Iran’s Response to IAEA Resolution

Enriching Uranium to 60% at Fordo

Date: 22 November 2022 - 21:48

News ID: ۱۰۹۳۱۶

TEHRAN -- Iran has begun enriching uranium to 60% purity at its underground Fordo nuclear site, the country’s nuclear chief said on Tuesday.
Iran is already enriching uranium to up to 60% purity elsewhere, above the 20% it produced before the 2015 agreement to cap enrichment at 3.67%.
“We had said that Iran will seriously react to any resolution and political pressure ... that is why Iran has started enriching uranium to 60% purity from Monday at the Fordo site,” said Muhammad Eslami, according to Iranian media.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 35-nation Board of Governors on Thursday passed a resolution, accusing the Islamic Republic of lack of cooperation. Iran had warned that the move could impact its “constructive relations” with the agency.
In a letter to the IAEA, the ISNA news agency reported, Iran had informed the agency about Tehran’s decision to use “IR-6 advanced centrifuges to produce 60% enriched uranium” at Fordo, a site buried inside a mountain.
The 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and three European countries plus the U.S., China and Russia lets Iran use only first-generation IR-1 centrifuges but, as the deal unraveled after then-President Donald Trump ditched it in 2018, Tehran has installed cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges, such as the IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6.
Fars news agency said Tehran had also started the process of “replacing the first-generation centrifuges (IR-1) with advanced IR-6 ones” at the Fordo site, while installing new cascades, or clusters, of advanced centrifuges at its underground Natanz nuclear sites.
“Iran has also started the process of injecting gas into two cascades of IR-2m and IR-4 advanced centrifuges at the Natanz site,” national TV reported.
The IAEA resolution is the second this year targeting Iran. The first resolution was adopted shortly after the agency’s director, Rafael Grossi, paid a controversial visit to Occupied Palestine and held talks with Israeli leaders.
Indirect talks between Tehran and U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to revive the 2015 accord have been at a stalemate since September, with Washington refusing to commit to any obligation not to leave a possible agreement again.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late last month that he saw little scope to restore the deal, as Iran battled foreign-backed riots.
The latest measures are in line with a law approved by the Iranian parliament to counter unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States on Tehran.

The parliament passed the law – dubbed the Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions – in December 2020, requiring the Iranian administration to restrict the IAEA’s inspections and accelerate the development of the country’s nuclear program beyond the limits set by the nuclear deal.

Iran took five steps in scaling back its obligations, among them abandoning operational limitations on its nuclear industry, including with regard to the capacity and level of uranium enrichment.

All those measures were adopted after informing the IAEA beforehand, with the agency’s inspectors present on the ground in Iran.

The recent anti-Iran resolution at the Board of Governors, ratified on Thursday, has criticized Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation with the agency. It was put forward by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, in continuation of their political pressures on Iran. Russia and China voted against the motion.