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.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79