On Wednesday, Hossein Naghavi-Hosseini, the spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee, announced plans to limit access for international inspectors to Iran’s nuclear sites.
The spokesperson said that “when the other party doesn’t fulfill its commitments, there is no necessity for us to meet our part of commitments”, confirming that the Islamic Republic would “probably impose limits on inspections, which means the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) surveillance on Iran’s nuclear activities will be reduced”.
On Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed that Tehran was working on advanced IR-9 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, which under the terms of the 2015 Nuclear Deal Iran had committed to not using until late 2023. The country’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, also told Iranian state TV that an array of 30 IR-6 centrifuges will be inaugurated in the coming weeks and boasted that Iran has “restored pre-deal capacity” by producing up to six kilograms of enriched uranium daily.
Earlier this week, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament made a statement to the United Nations General Assembly calling for Iran to “continue to facilitate all Agency access and information requests” and reaffirmed UK support for the IAEA’s “crucial independent, technical monitoring and reporting activities”.
This is Iran’s fourth step away from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) since July when the IAEA confirmed that the permitted 300kg cap of low enriched uranium (3.67%) had been exceeded. Just days later, Iran announced it had enriched uranium to 4.5% purity and had the ability to raise it to 20%, despite the JCPOA limit.
