US, Europeans React Mildly To Iran Accelerating Nuclear Enrichment
Western powers condemned Iran on Thursday for “escalation” of its nuclear program, after the UN watchdog said Tehran had accelerated its high-grade uranium enrichment.
Western powers condemned Iran on Thursday for “escalation” of its nuclear program, after the UN watchdog said Tehran had accelerated its high-grade uranium enrichment.
“Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium has no credible civilian justification,” France, Germany, Britain and the United States said in a statement, warning the Iranian regime that this measure “further aggravates the continued escalation of the Iranian nuclear program.”
Two days earlier, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had “increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023.”
The reduction in mid-2023 came about as part of a reported unwritten deal between the Biden administration and Iran. Releasing billions of frozen Iranian funds seems to have been part of that deal too –and also looking the other way as Iran exported oil to China in spite of sanctions.
The US government seems to have been hoping to contain the regime’s nuclear ambitions with leniency and good-will. Critics of the administration say President Joe Biden even “lied” to the Congress to avoid scrutiny and take his agreement over the line. The Administration denies all of this, of course, including the existence of a deal to begin with.
But whatever it was –deal, agreement, understanding– it began to crumble soon after October 7. Hostilities resumed and animosity once more took over after Hamas rampaged through Israel and Israelis began their onslaught of Gaza.
The IAEA report said Iran tripled its output of 60-percent enriched uranium in late November (from 3 kilograms a month to 9 kilograms). It had agreed to cap its production at 3 kg per month in June.
“These developments constitute a step in a bad direction on the part of Iran,” the US and EU3 noted in their statement. “These decisions show the absence of will on the part of Iran to engage in a de-escalation in good faith and result in irresponsible behavior in the context of regional tensions,”
Not surprisingly, Iran seems unmoved by the warnings.
“We have done nothing new and our activity is according to the regulations,” said the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, burying any hopes of going back to the levels of enrichment agreed with the Biden administration a few months ago.
All this comes amid growing fears of a conflagration in the Middle East, as Israel and the US face off Iran and its proxies from Yemen to Iraq to Lebanon.
Biden critics say his soft approach has emboldened Iran and its allied groups, who keep targeting US forces or interests in the region. Many believe the administration’s response to such attacks has been “token” strikes –with very little impact on attackers and almost no power of deterrence.
“Under Trump's maximum pressure campaign, we were able to crack down on many of Iran's terrorist capabilities,” Rep. Claudia Tenney said in an interview with Fox Thursday. “Yet, the Biden administration has allowed them to come back stronger than ever. The US must continue to put pressure on Iran and hold the IRGC accountable.”
On Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham of the Senate armed service committee lambasted President Biden and defense secretary Austin for “failing” US soldiers in the field, suggesting that IRGC positions inside Iran be bombed “to make it real to the Ayatollah, you attack a soldier through proxy, we're coming after you.”
“I've been saying [this] for six months now,” Graham said on Fox News Wednesday, “hit Iran. They have oil fields out in the open. They have a Revolutionary Guard headquarters you can see from space. Blow it off the map.”
Iran Briefing, a group of investigative journalists, have speculated that authorities have been mining titanium, present in the northwestern lake, which could explain why the once thriving salt-lake has dried up.
Although there has been no official response to these claims, the Urmia region in West Azarbaijan province does possess a titanium mine and magnesium recovered from lake brine can be used to refine it.
A 500 million Euro Titanium mining project was announced in a village near Lake Urmia, approximately ten miles to its west, in January.
The reformist Etemad newspaper published satellite images of Lake Urmia in November and reported that in the past year, “80% of the lake's water has dried up”, which “equates to the death of the sixth-largest saltwater lake globally."
Some experts have ruled out the possibility of reviving the lake which has been illegally salt mined for years, with rumors last year of lithium mining. “It is not in the government's interest, will, or power to revive Lake Urmia,” Roozbeh Eskandari, a hydraulic structures and dam construction expert, told Iran International.
Nikahang Kowsar, an environmental analyst, blames the IRGC, calling it "an environmental menace willing to destroy Iran’s water resources just to line its own pockets,” citing the building of dams "to finance the Quds Force budget,” Nikahang Kowsar told Iran International last month, branding the IRGC "Iran's water mafia".
“This is how the cost of building a dam like Gotvand [south of Iran] can increase from $1.5 billion to $3.3 billion, and nobody even dares to ask where all the money has gone when the contractor did such a poor job,” wrote the analyst in an article for Middle East Institute.
In 2020, the US said that any sales to Iran of titanium, among other metals including chromium, nickel and 60% tungsten, were sanctionable as they are useful to Iran's nuclear, missile, and military programs.
Ali Salajegheh, the head of the Iranian Environmental Protection Organization, on Thursday neither denied nor approved the mining claims but said, "They need to be investigated."
Meanwhile, the hardliner Fars News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, quoted an academic as saying the “rumors” are not true.
Behzad Hessari, a professor at Urmia University and the director of the environment department of Urmia Lake Research Institute, told Fars: “Methane gas is high in regions like the frozen forests of Siberia. Due to climate change, the ice is melting and the stored methane gas is released. This is not true for Lake Urmia.”
The lake's shrinking, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, risks both ecological and human implications. Once home to an array of wildlife, its decline increases the dust from the exposed lake bed reducing air quality, risking increased cases of respiratory illness among the local population.