Iran has injected uranium hexafluoride into the centrifuges at the Fordow site, and has announced that they will resume enrichment at the underground facility starting on midnight Wednesday.
Iran agreed to temporarily suspend the use of Fordow as part of the P5+1 nuclear deal, but has been backing away from those commitments, arguing that there needs to be a renegotiation based on the US pulling out and them not getting sanctions relief promised.
Several nations are complaining about the restarting of Fordow, and calling on Iran to immediately resume full commitment to all requirements as perceived by the West. Iran had set a deadline on Tuesday for the remaining nuclear deal parties to come up with a deal to save it; they did not.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said all parties need to do their part to save the deal, and that everyone is demanding Iran fulfill all obligations “without exception but are not giving anything in return.”
Attention Mr. Lavrov: You are the only one sitting on the JCPOA table. Truly dumb and even play the role on the national stage.
No, they have to keep the legal argument going…to emphasize American culpability and keep some businesses able to transact.
Iran needs to build a boatload of bombs–and China, Russian need to show some backbone.
Fordow is important for only one reason — it is harder to bomb. It is in a deep system of caves under a mountain.
Moving out into the open was an important signal of de-escalation. Moving back under cover is the opposite.
It is especially important that while the US could do some bombing of Fordow, Israel cannot. It commonly made reference to nuclear attacks, and/or special forces ground attacks using bases in Iraq or Azerbaijan, as ways to reach Fordow. Any Israeli attempt is likely to cross lines that could only lead to disaster.
Even US bombing could only close some entrances to the tunnels, and they can have many entrances, likely not all known to the US. US bombing is no sure remedy either. That is why even the US mentioned nuclear attacks.
Great insights… what hypocrisy it would be to nuke a country on the suspicion that maybe someday they will develop nukes. The US and Israel take hypocrisy to extraordinary heights, but let’s hope not that far.
“Several nations are complaining about the restarting of Fordow, and calling on Iran to immediately resume full commitment to all requirements”___EU: either live with it, or Iran says to you to immediately resume your full commitment to the Deal, otherwise there is no Deal….!
“calling on Iran to immediately resume full commitment to all requirements as perceived by the West.”
Which is precisely why the EU has never been interested in the Iran deal. When the US was compliant, the EU did see a chance to make some money selling to Iran. But once the US pulled out, the EU reverted to its “poodle” status vis-a-vis the US and started calling Iran’s slow cessation of compliance – as allowed by the JCPOA – as a “breach.”
Then they put up a red herring called INSTEX which never had a chance to indemnify EU corporations from US sanctions against dealing with Iran – and they knew that, as one official admitted.
So the EU never cared about the JCPOA except when they could profit by it. They never recognized Iran’s sovereign status.