Iran is tomorrow to announce details of a new cut to its commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal in response to sweeping US sanctions, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported yesterday.
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi is to hold a news conference to set out the details of Iran’s third cut to its nuclear commitments since May, it said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday said that the steps included abandoning all limits set by the 2015 deal to Iran’s nuclear research and development.
Photo: AFP / Iranian Presidential Office
He spoke of “expansions in the field of research and development, centrifuges, different types of new centrifuges and whatever we need for enrichment,” but did not elaborate.
Iran and three European countries — Britain, France and Germany — have been engaged in talks to try to save the nuclear deal that has been unraveling since US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in May last year and unilaterally reimposed sanctions.
Rouhani earlier on Wednesday told a Cabinet meeting: “I don’t think that ... we will reach a deal.”
However, he had also said that Tehran and the European powers had been getting closer to an agreement.
“If we had 20 issues of disagreement with the Europeans in the past, today there are three issues,” he said.
Iran has expressed mounting frustration at Europe’s failure to offset the effect of renewed US sanctions in return for its continued compliance with the agreement.
It had already hit back twice with countermeasures in response to the US withdrawal from the deal.
On July 1, Iran said that it had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to beyond the 300kg maximum set by the agreement. A week later, it announced it had exceeded a 3.67 percent cap on the purity of its uranium stocks.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday last week said that Iran’s uranium stockpile stood at about 360kg and that just more than 10 percent of it was enriched to 4.5 percent.
Rouhani has stressed that the countermeasures are all readily reversible if the remaining parties to the deal honor their undertakings to provide sanctions relief.
A senior US official on Wednesday ruled out any exemptions from Iran sanctions to permit a French-proposed credit line, which Tehran says could bring it back to full compliance with the deal.
“We can’t make it any more clear that we are committed to this campaign of maximum pressure and we are not looking to grant any exceptions or waivers,” US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told reporters.
On Wednesday, the US issued its third set of sanctions on Iran in less than a week.
In the latest salvo, the US Department of the Treasury blacklisted a shipping network of 16 entities, 10 people and 11 vessels that it said was selling oil on behalf of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.
The network sold more than US$500 million of oil this spring, mostly to Syria, benefiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and militant Lebanese allies Hezbollah, the department said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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