The Iranian regime announced that it will be rolling out 1,000 additional centrifuges after it said it would begin enriching uranium to levels far in excess of the nuclear deal.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency, announced the expansion on Tuesday, the Times of Israel reported. He also said that the country increased its supply of yellowcake, a uranium concentrate powder that is used for enrichment.
“One thousand centrifuges are being installed inside the country,” Salehi said, according to Iranian media. “We are currently installing 1,000 IR-2m centrifuges, but two cascades are installed and working.”
“Until three or four years ago, we used to produce an average of four to five tons of yellowcake, but for the past two years, we have increased the production of yellowcake to 30 tons,” Salehi said. “This year, the production of yellowcake will be between 35 and 40 tons, which means that we have 8-folded the production of yellowcake.”
The regime told the International Atomic Energy Agency in a weekend letter that it is planning to enrich uranium to 20%, in an apparent violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal, which mandated that Iran cannot enrich uranium by more than 3.67%, although the regime has previously broken the pact by upping enrichment to 4.5% purity.
On Tuesday, the United States hit back at Iran, which the State Department has labeled the world’s “worst state sponsor” of terrorism, and imposed fresh sanctions aimed at hurting the country’s steel industry.
“The Iranian metals sector is an important revenue source for the Iranian regime, generating wealth for its corrupt leaders and financing a range of nefarious activities, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, support for foreign terrorist groups, and a variety of human rights abuses, at home and abroad,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration “remains committed” to stopping revenue flows to Iran “as it continues to sponsor terrorist groups, support oppressive regimes, and seek weapons of mass destruction.”
This week’s tit-for-tat comes around the one-year anniversary of the successful U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. There were fears of a reprisal attack around the date, and the U.S. recently flew B-52 bombers off of Iran’s coast in a show of force.
Tensions further escalated on Monday when Tehran confirmed it seized a South Korean oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and on Tuesday when the regime asked Interpol a second time to issue a “red notice” calling for President Trump’s arrest and that of dozens of other U.S. officials it blames for Soleimani’s killing.
Since the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has faced crippling U.S. sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign by the Trump administration designed to squeeze Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime into submission.
