Iran Prepares to Nuke Up

Iran ready to boost uranium enrichment, says official 

Spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization says country is ready to increase the level of its uranium enrichment to 20 percent.

Iran is ready to boost the capacity of its uranium enrichment, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said Sunday, according to the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).

“Based on a decree by Iran’s Supreme Leader and the emphasis put on this issue by AEOI head, the country is ready to increase its uranium enrichment capacity to 190,000 separative work units (SWUs),” the spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi, was quoted as having said.

Kamalvandi said that Iran is also ready to increase the level of its uranium enrichment to 20 percent of purity.

Iran has drawn up plans to start re-designing the Arak heavy water reactor given the fact that the signatories to the nuclear deal have failed to fulfill their commitments, Kamalvandi added, according to IANS.

Under Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium at up to 3.67 percent purity, well below the 20 percent it was reaching before the deal.

US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in May of 2018, and has since then imposed two rounds of sanctions against Iran.

Iran, angry over the US withdrawal from the deal, has threatened several times that it will begin uranium enrichment beyond previous levels if the remaining parties fail to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran several months ago reopened a nuclear plant that was idle for nine years as it prepared to increase uranium enrichment capacity in response to Trump leaving the 2015 agreement.

Last month, AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran is taking preliminary steps to design uranium fuel with a purity of 20 percent for reactors instead of having to copy foreign designs.