This comes at a time when talks on renewing the nuclear deal have stalled.
On Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) presented a report stating that Iran is increasing its uranium mining and enrichment capabilities at plants located in Natang and Fordow. This is reported by Reuters.
An IAEA report to member states revealed that a third cluster of IR-6 centrifuges appeared in late August at the Natang fuel enrichment facility, bolstering Iran's nuclear apparatus. The report details the inspectors' last visit to the plant in late August, the newspaper reported.
The IR-1 centrifuges are the only machine that Iran was allowed to use under the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration. The US pulled out of the deal under former President Trump in 2018, a long-awaited move that reimposed tough sanctions on Tehran.
Read also: Returning to the nuclear agreement remains the best solution for the US, Iran and the world – Blinken
Indirect negotiations on restoring the agreement under the Biden administration warmed up at the beginning of the year, but did not bring results.
It will be recalled that in August US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Iran had taken a “step back” in its latest response to the proposal to revive the nuclear agreement, calling the renewal of the agreement in the near future “unlikely”. It is about the fact that Iran demanded the end of the IAEA investigation even before the resumption of negotiations on the nuclear agreement. And later Iran demanded stronger guarantees from the US to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.
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The return to the agreement on the control of Iran's nuclear program is postponed at least until the end of the year, at most – for an indefinite period. Why and what it will lead to, read in Oleksiy Izhak's article “How Russia and Israel disrupted the “nuclear agreement” between Iran and the USA, and how it concerns Ukraine“.
