Iran’s parliament on Tuesday advanced a bill that would end UN inspections of its nuclear facilities and require the government to boost its uranium enrichment if E3 signatories of the 2015 Joint Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal do not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions.
The official IRNA news agency said 251 lawmakers in the 290-seat chamber voted in favor, after which many began chanting “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
The vote to debate the bill was a show of defiance after the killing of the alleged mastermind of Iran’s military nuclear programme over the weekend.
The bill will need to pass through several other stages before becoming law.
It demands that European countries ease sanctions on Iran’s key oil and gas sector, and restore its access to the international banking system within three months.
The bill would also allow Iranian authorities to resume enriching uranium to 20%, which is below the threshold needed for nuclear weapons but higher than that required for civilian applications. In addition to this, it would also commission new centrifuges at nuclear facilities at Natanz and the underground Fordow site.
On Monday, it was confirmed that a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed in an apparent drone strike along the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Iraqi security sources told Saudi-based al-Arabiya News that a drone killed Muslim Shahdan, a senior commander in the IRGC, in a targeted strike on his car.
Other sources in the Iraqi security services told Lebanese-based al-Hadath that three of his companions died with him.
The reports did not say who was behind the strike, which reportedly happened early Sunday or late Saturday.
