Iran passes law threatening to halt nuclear inspections and boost enrichment

Iran’s Guardian Council watchdog body has approved a
law on Wednesday that obliges the government to halt UN inspections of its
nuclear sites and step up uranium enrichment beyond the limit set under
Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal if sanctions are not eased in two months.
In retaliation for the killing last week of Iran’s
top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel, Iran’s
hardline-dominated parliament had on Tuesday approved the bill with a strong
majority.
The Guardian Council is charged with ensuring draft
laws do not contradict Shi’ite Islamic laws or Iran’s constitution. However,
the stance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on
all matters of state, is not known.
“Today in a letter, the parliament speaker
officially asked the president to implement the new law,” Iran’s semi-official
Fars news agency reported.
Under the new law, Tehran would give two months to
the deal’s European parties to ease sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial
sectors, imposed after Washington quit the pact between Tehran and six powers
in 2018.
In reaction to Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure”
policy on Tehran, Iran has gradually reduced its compliance with the deal.
The law pushed by hardline lawmakers would make it
harder for US President-elect Joe Biden, who will take office in January, to
rejoin the agreement.
Biden has said he would return to the pact and would
lift sanctions if Tehran returned to “strict compliance with the nuclear deal”.
“There’s now
more pressure on (President Hassan) Rouhani’s government to secure a US return
to the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) quickly,” tweeted Ariane
Tabatabai, a Middle East researcher at the German Marshall Fund and Columbia
University.
Rouhani, the Iranian architect of the 2015 deal,
criticised parliament’s move as “harmful to diplomatic efforts” aimed at easing
US sanctions.
Under the new law, the government should resume
uranium enrichment to 20% and install advanced centrifuges at its Natanz and
Fordow nuclear facilities.
The deal caps the fissile purity to which Iran can
refine uranium at 3.67%, far below the 20% achieved before the deal and below
the weapons-grade level of 90%. Iran breached the 3.67% cap in July 2019 and
the enrichment level has remained steady at up to 4.5% since then.
Britain, France and Germany, all parties to the 2015
deal, have urged Iran to fully respect it.