The IAEA says Iran has notified the agency of the move that will take place at the Fordow plant.
Iran has told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that it plans to enrich uranium up to 20 percent purity, a level it achieved before dealing with 2015 with major powers at its Fordow Fuel Wealth Center that was buried inside a mountain.
“Iran has told the group that, in order to comply with a recent legal action by the country’s parliament, Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency plans to produce low-enrichment uranium (LEU) up to 20 percent. at the Fordow Fuel Wealth Center, “the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement Friday.
“Iran’s letter to the Group did not say … when this enrichment activity would take place.”
This move was one of many named in a law passed by Iran’s parliament last month in response to the killing of the country’s top nuclear scientist, whom Tehran has blamed Israel for.
Iran is already enriching at Fordow with first-generation IR-1 centrifuges.
Fordow was built inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from an air blast, and the 2015 contract does not allow enrichment there.
Iran has broken a 3.67 percent limit on the deal on which it can enrich uranium, but it has not risen up to 4.5 percent so far, very short of the 20 percent it achieved before the agreement and 90 percent are at military level.
The main goal of the contract was to extend the time that Iran would have to make a sufficiently fine material for a nuclear bomb, if it so chose, to at least a year from about two or three months.
He also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons program that it halted in 2003.
Iran denies ever getting one.
Iran has violated many of the treaty’s major obstacles to its nuclear activities in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 agreement and his reshuffle on economic sanctions.
Tehran says its breaches can be reversed swiftly if Washington ‘s moves are removed.
Joe Biden, who takes office Jan. 20, has said he will bring the U.S. back into the deal if Iran begins full compliance with its nuclear restrictions.