Iran Says it Resumes 20% Uranium Enrichment at Fordow Site

This Nov. 4, 2020, satellite photo by Maxar Technologies shows Iran's Fordow nuclear site. (AP)
This Nov. 4, 2020, satellite photo by Maxar Technologies shows Iran's Fordow nuclear site. (AP)
TT

Iran Says it Resumes 20% Uranium Enrichment at Fordow Site

This Nov. 4, 2020, satellite photo by Maxar Technologies shows Iran's Fordow nuclear site. (AP)
This Nov. 4, 2020, satellite photo by Maxar Technologies shows Iran's Fordow nuclear site. (AP)

Iran has resumed 20% uranium enrichment at an underground nuclear facility, the government said on Monday, breaching a 2015 nuclear pact with major powers and possibly complicating efforts by US President-elect Joe Biden to rejoin the deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Iran’s arch foe Israel, said the move was aimed at developing nuclear weapons and Israel would never allow Tehran to build them.

The enrichment decision, Iran’s latest contravention of the accord, coincides with increasing tensions between Iran and the United States in the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Tehran started violating the accord in 2019 in a step-by-step response to Trump’s withdrawal from it in 2018 and the reimposition of US sanctions lifted under the deal.

The agreement’s main aim was to extend the time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it chose to, to at least a year from roughly two to three months. It also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.

“A few minutes ago, the process of producing 20% enriched uranium has started in Fordow enrichment complex,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei told Iranian state media.

The UN nuclear watchdog confirmed that Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% purity at its Fordow site.

“Iran today began feeding uranium already enriched up to 4.1 percent U-235 into six centrifuge cascades at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant for further enrichment up to 20%,” the IAEA said in a statement on a report that was sent to member states.

The step was one of many mentioned in a law passed by Iran’s parliament last month in response to the killing of the country’s top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel.

“Our measures are fully reversible upon FULL compliance by ALL (parties to the deal),” tweeted Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Tehran insists it can quickly reverse its breaches if US sanctions are removed. Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20, has said the United States will rejoin the deal “if Iran resumes strict compliance” with the pact.

Nuclear watchdog
The Biden transition team declined comment on Iran’s enrichment move. The White House National Security Council had no comment, and referred queries to the US State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tehran’s move could further hinder efforts to salvage the pact as its breaches have increasingly worried some of the deal’s other parties, which have urged Iran to act responsibly.

In Brussels, a European Union Commission spokesperson said that the “move, if confirmed, would constitute a considerable departure from Iran’s commitments”.

On Jan 1, the IAEA said Tehran had told the watchdog it planned to resume enrichment up to 20% at the Fordow site, which is buried inside a mountain.

“The process of gas injection to centrifuges has started a few hours ago and the first product of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas will be available in a few hours,” Rabiei said.

Iran had earlier breached the deal’s 3.67% limit on the purity to which it can enrich uranium, but it had only gone up to 4.5% so far, well short of the 20% level and of the 90% that is weapons-grade.

US intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons program that it halted in 2003. Iran denies ever having had one.

In Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Iran’s enrichment decision could be explained only as a bid to “continue to carry out its intention to develop a military nuclear program”.

“Israel will not allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons,” he added.

Shielded by the mountains, Fordow is ringed by anti-aircraft guns and other fortifications. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead US officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.

The 2015 deal saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. The accord also called for Fordow to be turned into a research-and-development facility.

Under Iran’s former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran began enrichment at the 20% level. Israel, which has its own undeclared nuclear weapons program, feared Tehran was building an atomic bomb.

After the discovery of Fordow, the US worked on so-called “bunker buster” bombs designed to strike such facilities. As Israel threatened at one point to bomb Iranian nuclear sites like Fordow, US officials reportedly showed them a video of a bunker-buster bomb destroying a mock-up of Fordow in America’s southwestern desert.



As Trump Returns to the White House, Families Prepare for Mass Deportations

Venezuelan Jorluis Ocando (4th L) listens to directions before crossing the border to El Paso, Texas, United States with other migrants to attend their CPB One appointment in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on October 22, 2024. (Photo by Guillermo Arias / AFP)
Venezuelan Jorluis Ocando (4th L) listens to directions before crossing the border to El Paso, Texas, United States with other migrants to attend their CPB One appointment in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on October 22, 2024. (Photo by Guillermo Arias / AFP)
TT

As Trump Returns to the White House, Families Prepare for Mass Deportations

Venezuelan Jorluis Ocando (4th L) listens to directions before crossing the border to El Paso, Texas, United States with other migrants to attend their CPB One appointment in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on October 22, 2024. (Photo by Guillermo Arias / AFP)
Venezuelan Jorluis Ocando (4th L) listens to directions before crossing the border to El Paso, Texas, United States with other migrants to attend their CPB One appointment in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on October 22, 2024. (Photo by Guillermo Arias / AFP)

Parents around Nora Sanidgo's large, rectangular dining table had lunch before signing documents to make the Nicaraguan immigrant a legal guardian of their children, entrusting them to her if they are deported. She gave a list of what to carry with them: birth certificates, medical and school records, immigration documents, her phone number.
“Talk to your children and tell them what can happen, let them have my phone number on hand, let them learn it, let them record it,” Sandigo said Sunday.
For the group at Sandigo's southwest Miami home and for millions in the United States illegally or with temporary legal status, the start of Donald Trump's second term as president on Monday comes with a feeling that their time in the US may end soon. Trump made mass deportations a signature issue of his campaign and has promised a raft of first-day orders to remake immigration policy.
“You don’t have to be afraid, you have to be prepared,” Sandigo told the group of about 20 people, including small children, who watched a demonstration of how to respond if immigration officers knock on their door. “Take precautions wherever you are.”
Sandigo, who came to the US in 1988, has volunteered to be guardian for more than 2,000 children in 15 years, including at least 30 since December. A notary was on hand Sunday.
Erlinda, a single mother from El Salvador who arrived in 2013, signed legal rights to her US-born children, ages 10 and 8. She said she applied for asylum but doesn't know the status of her case.
“I am afraid for my children, that they will live the terror of not seeing their mother for a day, for a month, for a year,” said Erlinda, 45, who asked to be identified by first name only due to fears of being detained.
Plans for deportation arrests appeared to be in flux after news leaked of an operation in Chicago this week. Trump's “border czar” Tom Homan said on Fox News Sunday that Chicago was “not off the table, but we’re reconsidering when and how we do it.” He said the leak raised concerns about officer safety.
So-called sanctuary cities, which limit how local police cooperate with federal immigration authorities, have been a favorite Trump target, especially Chicago. Reports that his initial push would be in the nation's third-largest city brought a new sense of urgency and fear.
Chicago became a sanctuary city in the 1980s and has beefed up policies since, including after Trump first took office in 2017. Last week, the City Council heartily rejected a longshot plan calling for exceptions allowing local police to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on deportation cases for people accused or convicted of crimes.
The Rev. Homero Sanchez said he didn’t realize the depth of fear in the Chicago immigrant community he serves until someone asked him to handle the sale of their family’s home and other finances if they are picked up after Trump takes office.
“They feel they have been targeted for who they are. They feel like they’re reviving this fear they had eight years ago,” said Sanchez, who serves the St. Rita of Cascia Parish on Chicago’s South Side. “They’re feeling like something is going to happen. This is not their city because of the threat.”
Sanchez, whose congregation has consisted mostly of people of Mexican descent since the 1980s, devoted Sunday Mass “to solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters.”
Cardinal Blase Cupich, who leads the Archdiocese of Chicago, said reports of the city being targeted by immigration officers were "not only profoundly disturbing but also wound us deeply.”
“We are proud of our legacy of immigration that continues in our day to renew the city we love,” Cupich said Sunday during a visit to Mexico City, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
ICE arrests a fraction of targets in its street operations, though Trump is expected to cast a wider net than President Joe Biden, whose focus on picking up people away from the border was largely limited to those with serious criminal histories or who pose a risk to national security.
Biden’s administration also ended the practice of mass worksite arrests, which were common under Trump, including a 2019 operation targeting Mississippi chicken plants.
Trump aides have said immigration officers will arrest others, such as spouses or roommates, who are not targets but happen to be in the country illegally.