BICOM

French President Emmanuel Macron is sending his chief diplomatic adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, to Tehran today for urgent talks after Iran increased its uranium enrichment level in breach of the JCPOA nuclear agreement.

Macron said last weekend that he is trying to find a way to resume dialogue with Iran by 15 July. He spoke on Saturday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for more than an hour in an attempt to find a resolution to the current crisis.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed yesterday that Iran has enriched uranium above the agreed 3.67 per cent limit in the 2015 nuclear deal. A spokesman for the IAEA said its director general, Yukiya Amano, informed the IAEA board of governors that agency inspectors had verified Iran was “enriching uranium above 3.67 per cent U-235”.

According to a report to member states, the IAEA said it had verified Iran’s enrichment levels using online enrichment monitors. While the report did not say at what level Iran was enriching at, additional samples have been taken for analysis. According to the Iranian ISNA news agency, Iran said earlier on Monday that it was now enriching uranium at 4.5 per cent.

In May, Iran issued a 60-day deadline to the signatories of the nuclear deal – China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK – to protect it from US sanctions, otherwise it would break its commitments in the deal. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said yesterday that Iran has: “No hope nor trust in anyone, nor any country, but the door of diplomacy is open”. He warned Europe about another 60-day deadline that Iran set on Sunday: “If the remaining countries in the deal, especially the Europeans, do not fulfil their commitments seriously, and not do anything more than talk, Iran’s third step will be harder, more steadfast and somehow stunning”.

Echoing Mousavi, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation hinted that Iran might consider going to 20 per cent enrichment or higher as a third step if its demands are not met.