Tehran:Â Iran says it has restarted production at a “major” uranium facility involved in its nuclear program, though it still pledges to follow the terms of the country’s landmark atomic deal now under threat after US President Donald Trump pulled America out of the accord.
Iranian comments about the Isfahan plant, which produces material needed to make enriched uranium, appear aimed at pressuring Europeans and others to come up with a way to circumvent new American sanctions.
Already, many international organisations are pulling back from promised billion-dollar deals with Tehran and the country’s currency has entered a free-fall against the dollar.
What comes next likely will resemble Iran’s response to previous confrontation with the West over its contested atomic program.
The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said in a statement late on Wednesday that it reopened a plant that converts yellowcake, a uranium powder, into uranium hexafluoride gas. That gas is what scientists put inside of centrifuges to make enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear power plants or in atomic bombs. Iran long has said its program is peaceful, though the West and the United Nations point to work Iran did years earlier that could be used to weaponise its program.
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (AP).