Iranian researchers have been caught taking another “key step” in their bid to construct nuclear weapons, drawing a harsh rebuke from Washington’s leading European allies.
“Iran has no credible civilian justification for these activities, which are a key step in the development of a nuclear weapon,” the United Kingdom, France, and Germany said in a joint statement prompted by recent United Nations inspection reports.
Iranian officials have made a series of alarming moves toward weapons of mass destruction, explicitly intended to spur President Biden into easing the “maximum pressure” policies imposed by former President Donald Trump, a shift Tehran wants to see before any negotiations about returning to compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and other Western powers. That tactic benefits from European frustration with Trump’s withdrawal from the pact, but excessive nuclear saber-rattling will backfire if it provokes a reaction from the Europeans.
“We strongly urge Iran to halt these activities without delay and not to take any new non-compliant steps on its nuclear program,” the three European signatories to the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, said Friday. “In escalating its non-compliance, Iran is undermining the opportunity for renewed diplomacy to fully realize the objectives of the JCPOA.”
Iranian officials maintain that Biden must relent first, creating a stalemate in the first weeks of his term.
“It’s impossible [for Iran] to take the initiative to make concessions,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told a partially state-owned Chinese media outlet. Another Iranian military official complained that Biden’s stated position remains “the continuation of Trumpism in international relations.”
International Atomic Energy Agency officials prompted the European rebuke by notifying the governments that Iran had begun producing the uranium metal, a necessary component of a nuclear weapon, at a site regularly monitored by the U.N. inspectors.
“They seem to have decided to elevate the stakes in an effort to force the Biden administration to make a conciliatory move,” former State Department official Robert Einhorn said as one report pinpointed the offending activity as beginning on Feb. 6. “It may mean that they are now prepared to cross what many have seen as a red line — reducing IAEA monitoring activities.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team acknowledged that such threats heighten the “urgency” of “consultations with members of Congress” and allies but maintained the Biden administration isn’t shifting.
“The proposition that has been put on the table for some months now is quite clear,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. “We continue to urge Tehran to resume full compliance with the JCPOA. We continue to do that because that, for us, would open up the pathway for diplomacy. And we certainly hope to be able to pursue that pathway of diplomacy in order to resolve what we do consider to be an urgent challenge.”
