US preparing fresh sanctions on Iran

Atom Agreement which was signed in July 2015 requires Iran to have no more than 300 kg low enriched uranium.

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said a ship carrying over 25,000 pounds low-enriched uranium materials departed from Iran for Russian Federation, calling it “one of the most significant steps Iran has taken toward fulfilling its commitments”, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Iran has achieved a major victory by trading away easily- reversible nuclear concessions like enriched uranium and first-generation centrifuges that all can be easily reconstituted”, Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington, told the Post.

Under the nuclear accord, Iran has to remove all its nuclear material enriched as much as 20% that was not already in the form of fabricated fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, Kallanish Energy reports.

This would mean that it would not have enough fuel on hand to rapidly enrich enough to the levels needed to build a nuclear weapon – lengthening its so-called “breakout time” to more than a year.

The IAEA had no immediate comment on Monday’s shipment.

Iran was required to ship out all but 660 pounds of their low-enriched uranium, in an effort to reduce Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.

Iran’s enemy Israel is believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal and richer Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia could spend billions in a bid to catch up derailing global non-proliferation efforts.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy agency, said on Tuesday that Iran had received around 200 tons of yellow cake, a powder obtained in an intermediate step in the processing of natural uranium ore.

Kamalvandi said “Implementation Day” when nearly a decade of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran will be lifted was now near. Under terms of an agreement struck with five key members of the UN Security Council (the United States, the UK, Russia, China, France and Germany), Iran will limit and has allowed monitoring of its atomic program.