Since Trump left the agreement in May 2018, not a single other participant has joined him in renouncing it or reimposing sanctions.Written by David E. Sanger
Iran’s atomic energy agency said Saturday that it was deliberately violating another set of limits on its nuclear research and production that were imposed under the 2015 agreement renounced by President Donald Trump last year.
But the details suggested that Iran was more interested in increasing pressure on European nations to find a way around U.S.-imposed sanctions than in carrying out a full-scale effort to restore the capabilities it gave up when it struck the deal with the West.
During a news conference, a spokesman for the agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, confirmed that Iran had begun steps to work on advanced centrifuges — the equipment that spins to purify uranium, a fuel for nuclear power and weapons — in ways that are prohibited under the deal made with the Obama administration. Until four months ago Iran was continuing to comply with all of its major restrictions.
It was the third time this year that Iran had announced steps to break from those limits, saying it would no longer abide by an agreement that the United States was violating by reimposing sanctions. The accord required all signatories to lift many sanctions on Iran while it was in compliance; the European Union, Russia and China have all continued to honor the agreement.
The steps announced Saturday, which echoed a letter that Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, sent to the European Union on Thursday, appeared to be intended more to give Iran negotiating leverage than to significantly further its development of a nuclear weapon.
Zarif has often said the steps Iran has taken could be undone if France and other European nations agreed to compensate the country for oil sales lost because of U.S. sanctions. This month France presented Iran with a proposal for a $15 billion line of credit, secured by future oil shipments, that was devised to avoid U.S. sanctions.
Since Trump left the agreement in May 2018, not a single other participant has joined him in renouncing it or reimposing sanctions. Rather, the Europeans have sought workarounds that would keep Iran within the terms of the deal, and they have argued that Trump erred gravely by scrapping the agreement rather than building on it.
