Iran’s semi-official media, the Iranian Students News Agency, quoted parliamentary spokesman Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf as reporting that the first batch of enriched uranium of up to 60 percent purity was successfully refined at 0:40 a.m. local time on Friday, far exceeding the current level of 20 percent and adding another obstacle to negotiations on a nuclear deal.
The move is seen as Iran’s response to the attack on the Natanz enrichment plant, where the plant’s electricity distribution network was attacked the next day after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ordered the production of enriched uranium, and Israeli media later revealed the intelligence agency Mossad as the mastermind behind the attack.
The Iranian nuclear deal’s normative ceiling for enriched uranium is 3.67 percent.
Technically, enriched uranium of 60 percent purity still falls short of weapons-grade levels (above 90 percent). While Iran insists it will not do so, the continued accumulation of a stockpile of enriched uranium of this purity will help Iran shrink the time it takes to build a bomb.
To revive the Iran nuclear deal reached in 2015, Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, including the United States, as well as Germany, recently launched talks in Vienna, but the talks threaten to stall as Iran moves forward with its uranium enrichment program.
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