French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday urged Iran to rapidly reverse its first major breach of a nuclear pact, a move denounced by Donald Trump as “playing with fire”, as world powers try to pull Washington and Tehran back from confrontation.
US POLICY OF INCREASING PRESSURE ON IRAN
China, like France a signatory to the 2015 deal, said it regretted Iran’s move but urged all parties to exercise restraint and said the US policy of increasing pressure on Iran was the “root cause of the current tensions”.
Iran’s announcement on Monday that it had amassed more low-enriched uranium than permitted under the deal was confirmed by UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors Iran’s nuclear program under the deal.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the move was not a violation of the accord, arguing that Iran was exercising its right to respond to the US walkout last year. But the gambit may have far-reaching diplomatic consequences and comes less than two weeks after Trump said he ordered air strikes on Iran, only to cancel them minutes before impact.
The nuclear deal lifted most international sanctions against Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear work. It aimed to extend the time Tehran would need to produce a nuclear bomb, if it chose to, from roughly 2-3 months to a year.
Iran’s main demand – in talks with the European parties to the deal and as a precondition to any talks with US is to be allowed to sell its oil at the levels of April 2018, before Washington pulled out of the deal and imposed punishing economic sanctions.