Iran to breach uranium enrichment limits set by landmark nuclear deal - CNN

The announcement means the country is no longer complying with the agreement it signed with the United States and five other nations in 2015.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal and re-introduced economic sanctions in 2018.

Iran announced a partial withdrawal from the deal in May. Sunday marked the end of a 60-day ultimatum the country gave to the European signatories of the deal to ease sanctions on its banking and oil sectors.

Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear accord was intended to limit Iran's civilian nuclear program and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiei said Iran would cross the agreed 3.67% threshold on Sunday. He added that future concentration will be based on Iran's needs.

Keeping uranium enrichment to below 3.67% was one of the commitments Iran made in return for the lifting of economic sanctions in 2015. The level is enough for civil use to power parts of the country, but not enough to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran made two other major commitments as part of the deal. It agreed to reduce the number of its centrifuges, the tube-shaped machines that are used to enrich uranium, by two-thirds, and to slash its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%.

Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif sent a letter to the European Union's foreign representative Federica Mogherini to inform her Iran would no longer adhere to the deal's commitments, according to the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

"We will give an additional 60 days of time starting today before taking further steps," he wrote in Sunday's letter.

An EU spokesperson said the bloc was "extremely concerned at Iran's announcement."

"We strongly urge Iran to stop and reverse all activities inconsistent with its commitments under the JCPOA ... we are in contact with the other JCPOA participants regarding the next steps," the spokesperson said.

Israel has already called on European leaders to impose sanctions on Iran. "The enrichment of uranium is made for one reason and one reason only -- it's for the creation of atomic bombs," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Cabinet meeting Sunday morning.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday its inspectors would verify Iran's announcement.

"We are aware of Iran's announcement related to its uranium enrichment level. IAEA inspectors in Iran will report to our headquarters as soon as they verify the announced development," Fredrik Dahl, the agency's spokesperson, told CNN.

The 2015 deal was signed following two years of intense negotiations by the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom in 2015.

Trump's decision to ditch the deal -- one of the landmark achievements of his predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama -- put pressure on the remaining signatories. They could either side with Trump and risk Iran developing a nuclear weapon, or try to save the deal and possibly exposing themselves to potential US sanctions.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Iran on Sunday for breaching the limits, a spokesperson for the Élysée presidential palace told CNN on Sunday.

Macron made a last-ditch attempt to salvage the agreement on Saturday. He discussed the deal with the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a phone call Saturday, according to Iran's official news agency IRNA and the Élysée presidential palace in Paris.

The French statement said Macron agreed with Rouhani to explore options "for a resumption of dialogue between all parties" by July 15.

During the phone call, Macron voiced "his strong concern about the risk of a further weakening of the 2015 nuclear agreement, and the consequences that would necessarily follow."

This story has been updated to correct the position of Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

CNN's Sam Bradpiece, Oren Liebermann, Michael Schwartz, Jennifer Hauser, Sarah El Sirgany, Sara Mazloumsaki and Jennifer Deaton contributed to this article.

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2019-07-07 12:27:00Z
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Greece election: End of the road for Alexis Tsipras's Syriza? - Al Jazeera English

Greeks are heading to the polls to elect a new parliament, in a snap vote that all opinion polls predict will put an end to more than four years of leftist rule.

After a largely lacklustre campaign dominated by disappointment over the pace of the country's economic recovery, polling stations on Sunday opened across Greece at 7am (04:00 GMT). They will close 12 hours later, when initial exit polls will be published.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, 44, called the election three months before the end of his term after his left-wing Syriza suffered a crushing 9.5-percentage point defeat in May's European Parliament elections.

Waiting in the wings to replace Syriza is the centre-right New Democracy party, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the 51-year-old son of a former prime minister and brother of an former foreign minister.

He is seeking an absolute majority in the country's 300-member parliament, a result that will mark a major shift for the crisis-hit country run for nearly a decade by fragile coalitions of ideologically divergent parties united by their stance either in favour or against Greece's bailout deals.

Campaign pledges

Public surveys in the lead-up to Sunday's vote showed New Democracy retaining a firm 8-10 percentage-point lead over Syriza, as well as being able to secure an outright majority.

190706104411116

The projections, coupled with the fact that the election is being held for the first time in the middle of summer, a time when many Greeks are either on holiday or holding temporary tourism jobs far from their homes, has shifted attention on turnout.

Both Tsipras and Mitsotakis have called on their supporters not to assume Sunday's result is a foregone conclusion and to go out and vote.

Tsipras used the final days of the election campaign on a tour through some of Greece's biggest cities, insisting he can pull off a comeback.

"The upset will come if everyone and each one of us succeeds in persuading another one to come to the ballot box," he told supporters in Heraklion, the largest city on the island of Crete, earlier this week.

For his part, Mitsotakis repeated his call for voters to give him a "strong mandate" that will allow his party to implement its manifesto, which is largely focused on introducing tax cuts, attracting much-needed investments and bolstering security.

"Now is the time for responsibility, rallying together and participation," he said at a campaign rally in Athens on Thursday.

Mitsotakis waves at supporters after voting at a polling station in Athens [Yiorgos Kontarinis/Eurokinissi via Reuters]

Economic complaints

The election on Sunday comes as Greece still struggles to emerge from a nearly decade-long financial crisis that saw its economy shrink by a whopping 25 percent and hundreds of thousands of mostly young people leave the country in the hopes of better opportunities abroad.

Syriza, which before the crisis was on the fringes of the country's political landscape, stormed to power in January 2015, replacing a New Democracy-led government amid widespread discontent over years of harsh fiscal measures imposed by Greece's bailout creditors.

But despite its promises to end austerity, the Syriza-led government seven months later caved in to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund's demands, signing onto a third bailout deal and implementing further tax hikes. Still, it managed to regain power in a snap election in September 2015 and form a coalition government with the nationalist Independent Greeks party.

Greece exited its final bailout last year but is still under financial surveillance from its creditors. Its economy is expected to expand by around two percent in 2019 but financial woes remain, including an unemployment rate of 18 percent, the eurozone's highest.

Along with the chronic financial grievances, mainly from Greece's shrinking middle class, Tsipras's government has also come under fire for mismanaging crises, including the response to a devastating fire near Athens last summer that killed 102 people, and for brokering a widely unpopular deal to resolve a decades-long dispute over the name of neighbouring North Macedonia.

'Jury not out'

Panos Polyzoidis, a political analyst in Athens, told Al Jazeera that a New Democracy win could signify "a return to normality ... [and] possibly the end of the crisis, in political terms.

"That crisis has cost most political forces a lot in influence. New Democracy is one of the parties that survived. It also seems that Syriza is a party that came to the limelight because of the crisis and will probably also survive the post-crisis period."

Looking ahead, Polyzoidis said "the jury is not out yet" on the financial front.

"It's very difficult to see where this is heading," he said. "The bailout programmes have ended, but austerity has not ended," Polyzoidis added. "New Democracy has been promising growth-orientated policies, lowering taxes, lowering social security contributions. It all remains to be seen how feasible these are because the fiscal restrains remain."

According to official figures, 9,903,864 people, including nearly 520,000 first-time voters are registered to cast ballots. Greeks living abroad are not allowed to vote.

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2019-07-07 11:14:00Z
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Israel's Netanyahu calls Iran enrichment move a 'very, very dangerous step' - CNBC

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on during a weekly cabinet meeting on November 4, 2012 in Jerusalem, Israel.

Sebastian Scheiner | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday an announced increase of uranium enrichment by Iran was an extremely dangerous move and he again called on Europe to impose punitive sanctions on Tehran.

Netanyahu made the remarks after Iran said it is fully prepared to enrich uranium at any level and with any amount, in further defiance of U.S. efforts to squeeze it with sanctions and force it to renegotiate a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

In a news conference broadcast live, senior Iranian officials said Tehran, which has denied seeking nuclear arms, would keep reducing its commitments every 60 days unless signatories of the pact moved to protect it from U.S. sanctions.

"This is a very, very dangerous step," Netanyahu said in public remarks to his cabinet.

"Iran has violated its solemn promise under the U.N. Security Council not to enrich uranium beyond a certain level," he said.

"I call on my friends, the heads of France, Britain and Germany — you signed this deal and you said that as soon as they take this step, severe sanctions will be imposed — that was the Security Council resolution. Where are you?" Netanyahu said.

If any one of the three European parties to the accord believe Iran has violated the agreement, they can trigger a dispute resolution process that could, within as few as 65 days, end at the U.N. Security Council with a reimposition of U.N. sanctions on Tehran.

The other remaining signatories, Russia and China, are allies of Iran and unlikely to make such a move.

"The enrichment of uranium is made for one reason and one reason only — it's for the creation of atomic bombs," said Netanyahu, a strong opponent of the 2015 agreement.

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2019-07-07 09:25:38Z
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Greece election: End of the road for Alexis Tsipras's Syriza? - Al Jazeera English

Greeks are heading to the polls to elect a new parliament, in a snap vote that all opinion polls predict will put an end to more than four years of leftist rule.

After a largely lacklustre campaign dominated by disappointment over the pace of the country's economic recovery, polling stations on Sunday opened across Greece at 7am (04:00 GMT). They will close 12 hours later, when initial exit polls will be published.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, 44, called the election three months before the end of his term after his left-wing Syriza suffered a crushing 9.5-percentage point defeat in May's European Parliament elections.

Waiting in the wings to replace Syriza is the centre-right New Democracy party, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the 51-year-old son of a former prime minister and brother of an ex-foreign minister.

He is seeking an absolute majority in the country's 300-member parliament, a result that will mark a major shift for the crisis-hit country run for nearly a decade by fragile coalitions of ideologically divergent parties united by their stance either in favour or against Greece's bailout deals.

Campaign pledges

Public surveys in the lead-up to Sunday's vote showed New Democracy retaining a firm 8-10 percentage-point lead over Syriza, as well as being able to secure an outright majority.

190706104411116

The projections, coupled with the fact that the election is being held for the first time in the middle of summer, a time when many Greeks are either on holiday or holding temporary tourism jobs far from their homes, has shifted attention on turnout.

Both Tsipras and Mitsotakis have called on their supporters not to assume Sunday's result is a foregone conclusion and to go out and vote.

Tsipras used the final days of the election campaign on a tour through some of Greece's biggest cities, insisting he can pull off a comeback.

"The upset will come if everyone and each one of us succeeds in persuading another one to come to the ballot box," he told supporters in Heraklion, the largest city on the island of Crete, earlier this week.

For his part, Mitsotakis repeated his call for voters to give him a "strong mandate" that will allow his party to implement its manifesto, which is largely focused on introducing tax cuts, attracting much-needed investments and bolstering security.

"Now is the time for responsibility, rallying together and participation," he said at a campaign rally in Athens on Thursday.

Mitsotakis waves at supporters after voting at a polling station in Athens [Yiorgos Kontarinis/Eurokinissi via Reuters]

Economic complaints

The election on Sunday comes as Greece still struggles to emerge from a nearly decade-long financial crisis that saw its economy shrink by a whopping 25 percent and hundreds of thousands of mostly young people leave the country in the hopes of better opportunities abroad.

Syriza, which before the crisis was on the fringes of the country's political landscape, stormed to power in January 2015, replacing a New Democracy-led government amid widespread discontent over years of harsh fiscal measures imposed by Greece's bailout creditors.

But despite its promises to end austerity, the Syriza-led government seven months later caved in to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s demands, signing onto a third bailout deal and implementing further tax hikes. Still, it managed to regain power in a snap election in September 2015 and form a coalition government with the nationalist Independent Greeks party.

Greece exited its final bailout last year but is still under financial surveillance from its creditors. Its economy is expected to expand by around two percent in 2019 but financial woes remain, including an unemployment rate of 18 percent, the eurozone's highest.

Along with the chronic financial grievances, mainly from Greece's shrinking middle class, Tsipras's government has also come under fire for mismanaging crises, including the response to a devastating fire near Athens last summer that killed 102 people, and for brokering a widely unpopular deal to resolve a decades-long dispute over the name of neighbouring North Macedonia.

'Jury not out'

Panos Polyzoidis, a political analyst in Athens, told Al Jazeera that a New Democracy win could signify "a return to normality ... [and] possibly the end of the crisis, in political terms.

"That crisis has cost most political forces a lot in influence. New Democracy is one of the parties that survived. It also seems that Syriza is a party that came to the limelight because of the crisis and will probably also survive the post-crisis period."

Looking ahead, Polyzoidis said "the jury is not out yet" on the financial front.

"It's very difficult to see where this is heading," he said. "The bailout programmes have ended, but austerity has not ended," Polyzoidis added. "New Democracy has been promising growth-orientated policies, lowering taxes, lowering social security contributions. It all remains to be seen how feasible these are because the fiscal restrains remain."

According to official figures, 9,903,864 people, including nearly 520,000 first-time voters are registered to cast ballots. Greeks living abroad are not allowed to vote.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/voting-greece-snap-elecion-190707052648921.html

2019-07-07 10:53:00Z
CAIiEIS7rQcGxXWcYHgAYf51ElsqFAgEKgwIACoFCAowhgIwkDgw0O8B

Greece election: End of the road for Alexis Tsipras's Syriza? - Aljazeera.com

Greeks are heading to the polls to elect a new parliament, in a snap vote that all opinion polls predict will put an end to more than four years of leftist rule.

After a largely lacklustre campaign dominated by disappointment over the pace of the country's economic recovery, polling stations on Sunday opened across Greece at 7am (04:00 GMT). They will close 12 hours later, when initial exit polls will be published.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, 44, called the election three months before the end of his term after his left-wing Syriza suffered a crushing 9.5-percentage point defeat in May's European Parliament elections.

Waiting in the wings to replace Syriza is the centre-right New Democracy party, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the 51-year-old son of a former prime minister and brother of an ex-foreign minister.

He is seeking an absolute majority in the country's 300-member parliament, a result that will mark a major shift for the crisis-hit country run for nearly a decade by fragile coalitions of ideologically divergent parties united by their stance either in favour or against Greece's bailout deals.

Campaign pledges

Public surveys in the lead-up to Sunday's vote showed New Democracy retaining a firm 8-10 percentage-point lead over Syriza, as well as being able to secure an outright majority.

190706104411116

The projections, coupled with the fact that the election is being held for the first time in the middle of summer, a time when many Greeks are either on holiday or holding temporary tourism jobs far from their homes, has shifted attention on turnout.

Both Tsipras and Mitsotakis have called on their supporters not to assume Sunday's result is a foregone conclusion and to go out and vote.

Tsipras used the final days of the election campaign on a tour through some of Greece's biggest cities, insisting he can pull off a comeback.

"The upset will come if everyone and each one of us succeeds in persuading another one to come to the ballot box," he told supporters in Heraklion, the largest city on the island of Crete, earlier this week.

For his part, Mitsotakis repeated his call for voters to give him a "strong mandate" that will allow his party to implement its manifesto, which is largely focused on introducing tax cuts, attracting much-needed investments and bolstering security.

"Now is the time for responsibility, rallying together and participation," he said at a campaign rally in Athens on Thursday.

Financial complaints

The election on Sunday comes as Greece still struggles to emerge from a nearly decade-long financial crisis that saw its economy shrink by a whopping 25 percent and hundreds of thousands of mostly young people leave the country in the hopes of better opportunities abroad.

Syriza, which before the crisis was on the fringes of the country's political landscape, stormed to power in January 2015, replacing a New Democracy-led government amid widespread discontent over years of harsh fiscal measures imposed by Greece's bailout creditors.

But despite its promises to end austerity, the Syriza-led government seven months later caved in to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s demands, signing onto a third bailout deal and implementing further tax hikes. Still, it managed to regain power in a snap election in September 2015 and form a coalition government with the nationalist Independent Greeks party.

Greece exited its final bailout last year but is still under financial surveillance from its creditors. Its economy is expected to expand by around two percent in 2019 but financial woes remain, including an unemployment rate of 18 percent, the eurozone's highest.

Along with the chronic financial grievances, mainly from Greece's shrinking middle class, Tsipras's government has also come under fire for mismanaging crises, including the response to a devastating fire near Athens last summer that killed 102 people, and for brokering a widely unpopular deal to resolve a decades-long dispute over the name of neighbouring North Macedonia.

Panos Polyzoidis, a political analyst in Athens, told Al Jazeera that a New Democracy win could signify "a return to normality ... [and] possibly the end of the crisis, in political terms.

"That crisis has cost most political forces a lot in influence. New Democracy is one of the parties that survived. It also seems that Syriza is a party that came to the limelight because of the crisis and will probably also survive the post-crisis period."

According to official figures, 9,903,864 people, including nearly 520,000 first-time voters are registered to cast ballots. Greeks living abroad are not allowed to vote.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/voting-greece-snap-elecion-190707052648921.html

2019-07-07 09:03:00Z
CBMiVmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vbmV3cy8yMDE5LzA3L3ZvdGluZy1ncmVlY2Utc25hcC1lbGVjaW9uLTE5MDcwNzA1MjY0ODkyMS5odG1s0gFaaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYWxqYXplZXJhLmNvbS9hbXAvbmV3cy8yMDE5LzA3L3ZvdGluZy1ncmVlY2Utc25hcC1lbGVjaW9uLTE5MDcwNzA1MjY0ODkyMS5odG1s

Iran set to exceed uranium enrichment limit in 2015 nuclear deal - Aljazeera.com

Iran has announced it will begin enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent limit set in its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. 

The move on Sunday is part of an effort to press Europe to salvage the accord after the United States pulled out and reimposed punishing sanctions, including on Iran's oil sector. 

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's nuclear agency, said technical preparations for the new level of enrichment would be completed "within several hours and enrichment over 3.67 percent will begin".

Monitoring will show the increased level by Monday morning, he told reporters in Tehran.

Under the accord, Iran agreed to enrich uranium to no more than 3.67 percent, which is enough for power generation, but far below weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. Iran denies it seeks nuclear weapons, but the nuclear deal sought to prevent that as a possibility by limiting enrichment and Iran's stockpile of uranium to 300 kg.

On July 1, Iran and United Nations inspectors acknowledged Tehran had amassed more low-enriched uranium than the stockpile limit permitted under the nuclear deal.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, said Iran was taking the new step on Sunday because of the pact's remaining signatories' failure to shield Tehran from US sanctions that prevent it from selling its oil.

He said Iran would announce a scale back of other commitments in 60 days if there was no further progress. 

"This is to protect the nuclear deal, not to nullify it," he said at the news conference. "This is an opportunity for talks. And if our partners fail to use this opportunity they should not doubt our determination to leave the deal."

The US could also join such talks if it lifted the sanctions it has reimposed on Iran, said Araghchi. 

There was political will in Europe to save the deal, he said, referring to a new payment mechanism known as Instex, which is meant to help Iran bypass US sanctions. However, the trade channel was "not going to work unless European countries use it to buy Iranian oil," he said. 

"But they are trying to help us. We are hoping to reach a solution. Otherwise, within 60 days we will take another step."

Araghchi added that Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has outlined additional areas in which Iran would reduce its commitments in a letter to Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign policy chief. 

Iranian officials have previously stressed that all the moves announced so far could be reversed "in hours" if the other parties to the nuclear deal were to make good on their side of the bargain - relief from sanctions.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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2019-07-07 08:05:00Z
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Iran set to exceed uranium enrichment limit in 2015 nuclear deal - Aljazeera.com

Iran has announced it will begin enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent limit set in its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. 

The move on Sunday is part of an effort to press Europe to salvage the accord after the United States pulled out and reimposed punishing sanctions, including on Iran's oil sector. 

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's nuclear agency, said technical preparations for the new level of enrichment would be completed "within several hours and enrichment over 3.67 percent will begin".

Monitoring will show the increased level by Monday morning, he told reporters in Tehran.

Under the accord, Iran agreed to enrich uranium to no more than 3.67 percent, which is enough for power generation, but far below weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. Iran denies it seeks nuclear weapons, but the nuclear deal sought to prevent that as a possibility by limiting enrichment and Iran's stockpile of uranium to 300 kg.

On July 1, Iran and United Nations inspectors acknowledged Tehran had amassed more low-enriched uranium than the stockpile limit permitted under the nuclear deal.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, said Iran was taking the new step on Sunday because of the pact's remaining signatories' failure to shield Tehran from US sanctions that prevent it from selling its oil.

He said Iran would announce a scale back of other commitments in 60 days if there was no further progress. 

"This is to protect the nuclear deal, not to nullify it," he said at the news conference. "This is an opportunity for talks. And if our partners fail to use this opportunity they should not doubt our determination to leave the deal."

Iranian officials have previously stressed that all the moves announced so far could be reversed "in hours" if the other parties to the nuclear deal were to make good on their side of the bargain - relief from sanctions.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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2019-07-07 07:41:00Z
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