Iranian president says Iran will enrich uranium to ‘any amount we want
 

https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/...g?w=1280&ssl=1

His messaging focuses on Iranians under sanctions pressure as well as European partners who have failed to stand up to the U.S.

Increasing pressure on European partners to live up its end of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday warned that his country will step up its enrichment of uranium to “any amount that we want” as of Sunday.

“Our advice to Europe and the United States is to go back to logic and to the negotiating table,” said a defiant Rouhani, according to the Associated Press.

“Go back to understanding, to respecting the law and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Under those conditions, all of us can abide by the nuclear deal,” he added.

President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) in May 2018, and reimposed a brutal series of oil and financial sanctions on Iran. He also threatened secondary sanctions on other signatories of the deal (France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and Germany) should they trade with or invest in the country.

While Rouhani and other Iranian officials continue to blame European countries for failing to come up with any meaningful way to circumvent U.S. sanctions, it’s worth noting that these statements also speak to a domestic audience of Iranians who are once again experiencing great hardship.

The sanctions have meant that a population of some 80 million are once again, effectively, cut off from the global economy — they can neither export their goods nor import what they need to fill store shelves or supply their manufacturing chain.

Banking sanctions mean they can’t transfer money to pay for their children’s tuition overseas, and Trump’s Muslim travel ban makes travel to the United States for almost any reason — academic fellowship, medical treatments, or family visits — impossible.

Rouhani’s comments on Wednesday also came on the 31st anniversary of the downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the U.S. Navy.

President of Iran Hassan Rouhani in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on June 15, 2019. CREDIT: Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
Iran responds to Trump’s crackdowns with promise to increase nuclear enrichment
Tehran and Washington are engaged in a hot and dangerous cycle of signaling.

In 1988, the USS Vincennes crossed into Iranian waters in pursuit of Iranian speedboats said to be harassing commercial vessels in the area. The Vincennes fired on Iranian ships, and while in Iranian waters, mistook a Dubai-bound Iran Air flight for a fighter jet and shot it out of the sky, killing all 290 people on board.

For this, USS Vincennes Capt. William C. Rogers was later awarded the Legion of Merit award. Every year, on the anniversary of the attack, Iranians — including the families of those who were killed — throw flowers into waters of the Persian Gulf in mourning.

Rouhani’s comments are the latest in a series of statements from Iran, warning its allies that it is running out of patience. It abided by the enrichment limitations set by the JCPOA for a year after the United States violated it, and got nothing in return.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Agnes von der Muhll told reporters on Wednesday that “Putting (the deal) into question will only increase the already heightened tensions in the region.”

But to Iran, the JCPOA has been entirely one-sided, and it is now doubling-down on domestic interests and messaging.

Iran, which does not have a nuclear weapons program, has already said it needs 5% enrichment for its power plant in Bushehr — an enrichment limit that exceeds the 3.67% allowed under the JCPOA.

A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization in June said enrichment at 20% is useful for research at a reactor in Tehran (levels that can be used for medical purposes).

Enrichment at 90% is considered weapons-grade. Iran has already exceeded the 300-kilograms stockpile limits on low-enrichment uranium, which was inevitable given that the United States stopped granting waivers to countries to store Iran’s excess heavy water and enriched uranium.

Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. If it decided that it wanted to build one, experts have said that it would take a year for it to have enough material to build one bomb.

European partners in the JCPOA on Tuesday said they were “extremely concerned” by Iran’s breach of the deal, and Reuters reported that Israel is bracing for a military confrontation between the United States and Iran.

These moves come as the Trump administration has moved an aircraft carrier ship, along with bombers and fighter jets to the region, further escalating tensions with Iran, claiming it attacked oil tankers in the region and shot down a surveillance drone in international air space.

Iran has denied any involvement in the oil tanker attacks in May and June, and maintains that the unmanned U.S. drone it shot down was in Iranian air space.

Two weeks ago, Trump claimed he had ordered strikes on several Iranian military targets but aborted the mission 10 minutes prior to execution, opting instead for cyberattacks on Iranian military networks and sanctions on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several high-ranking military officers.

On Monday, the White House went so far as to claim that Iran had not complied with the terms of the deal “before its existence” — in other words, Iran was supposed to comply with a deal that had not yet been made.

This prompted a swift response from Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who simply asked, “Seriously?”

Seriously? pic.twitter.com/oZApumVt2T

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 2, 2019

It’s unclear what this White House statement really means, but once the deal was struck, Iranian nuclear facilities started undergoing regular inspections by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, which were deemed to be in compliance until Tehran recently exceeded the stockpile limits dictated by the deal.

Iran has maintained that its recent breach of the deal is “reversible” should European partners start to offer it sanctions relief.

yes americans discuss invasions and the murder of millions of people as entertainment on TV...they have like "7 countries in 5 years" invasion plans and they speak openly about them on talk shows and the public laughs...their generals do not even hide it...

would you not want to protect yourself against such a people? I hope iran nukes up ASAP and starts selling nukes to others....so that we can be free from appearing on talk shows as future targets for US entertainment....

can anybody really blame iran for not wanting american thugs in their region?


In 1953, the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup d’tat overthrowing the duly and democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddegh. They replaced him with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who imposed a reign of terror with the support of the US and Great Britain targeting any who supported Mosaddegh or opposed the Shah. The Shah was seen as a puppet of the West in a country with a history and a culture going back over 2000 years. This environment allowed radical religious conservative elements to exploit the hegemonic behavior of the US and Great Britain to their cause and ultimately to the overthrow of the Shah and the imposition of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
After the imposition of the theocratic regime, some students took control of the US Embassy and held hostages for 444 days a violation of international law. The US undertook a rescue effort that failed. The hostages were released in 1981. As a result, relations between the US and Iran have been almost non-existent except through third parties.
With the release of the hostages, the most serious event was the accidental downing of an Irani passenger liner in 1988. Since then both parties continue a diplomatic jousting match. The US gives almost unconditional support to Iran’s geopolitical of Israel and Saudi Arabia rivals while Iran continued to enrich uranium and act through proxies. Then in 2015, the EU and the permanent members of the UN reached an agreement with Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the agreement and initiated a series of very harsh sanctions even targeting any entity that dared to continue to trade with Iran. All of this even though the inspectors verified the compliance of the Iranians. As a result, Iran resumed enrichment of its uranium and is pitting the US against not only our European allies but the other signatories of the JCOPA.
In conclusion, before overthrowing a duly and democratically elected government in a sovereign country with a culture and civilization thousands of years older than your own consider the consequences not five years in the future, not ten years in the future, but fifty or seventy years in the future.

can you blame them for not nuking up sooner? :thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup


U.S. Navy Capt. Will C. Rogers III was awarded Legion of Merit for his Persian Gulf operations which included the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner killing the 290 innocent people on board.