Iran on Sunday will announce an increase in uranium enrichment to 5%, a concentration above the limit set by its 2015 nuclear deal, an Iranian official told Reuters, in a move signaling a deepening challenge to escalating US sanctions pressure.
The declaration comes at a time of sharply increased US-Iranian confrontation, a year after Washington quit the pact and reimposed sanctions that had been lifted under the accord in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear work.
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"The main announcement tomorrow will be the increase of the level of enrichment to 5% percent from 3.67% that we agreed under the deal," the official said on Saturday on condition of anonymity.
Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency reported that senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi would announce more cuts in its commitments to the pact at a news conference Sunday morning in Tehran.
Sunday's planned announcement is a setback for Britain, France, and Germany, co-signatories of the deal who have pressed for months to persuade Iran to remain committed to the accord.
Iran has said that the Europeans have done "too little, too late" to salvage the pact by protecting Iran's economic interests from US sanctions.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iranian officials were unanimous in raising the level of uranium enrichment beyond the 3.67% set in accord, in remarks posted on Khamenei's official website.
"For example, we need uranium enriched to 5% for use in the Bushehr [power plant] and this is a completely peaceful purpose," Velayati said, hinting that this might be the first step Iran might take in raising the enrichment level.
The United States, meanwhile, called an emergency meeting of the UN atomic watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors to discuss Iran, the US mission to the agency said on Friday.
Any country on the board can call a meeting, and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in a note to member states that the meeting would be held on Wednesday.
What exactly the meeting would achieve, however, was unclear, diplomats said.
Parties to the deal have a separate forum they meet in called the Joint Commission, and the deal lays out possible action that can be taken there. Washington pulled out of both the deal and the Joint Commission last year.
Other signatories to the 2015 deal, apart from Iran and the United States, are Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany.
