Starting up the Arak heavy water reactor's secondary circuit doesn't violate Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But it does inch Tehran's program closer toward weapons-grade levels.

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Ali Akbar Salehi explained to state TV that the secondary circuit transfers heat to the reactor's cooling system. He said the entire reactor system will go online in 2021.

Heavy water helps cool reactors, producing plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Britain is helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces. London has filled the role left after the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal last year.

Tehran has slowly stepped up violations of the nuclear deal to pressure world powers to provide more incentives to make up for the US withdrawal from the deal. American economic sanctions are having a crushing effect on Iran's economy.

On Sunday, Adm. Ali Shamkhani of Iran's Supreme National Security Council warned that his country will take another step in "lowering its commitment to the deal, if Europe does not implement its commitments."

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, said last month that Iran breached another limit of the nuclear deal by stockpiling more heavy water than the accord allowed.

Also in November, Washington renewed sanctions waivers that allow Russia and other European nations to conduct civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran, specifically the redesign work to continue at the Arak reactor and at the Fordow uranium enrichment facility. Both sites are monitored by the IAEA.

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"The organization has the possibility to produce 5%, 20% and 60%, and has this capacity," AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said during a news conference at the underground Fordow nuclear plant, the official IRIB news agency reported.

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"At the moment, the need is for 5%," he added.

Iran's highest political authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last month that the Islamic republic had never pursued the building or use of nuclear weapons, which its religion forbids.

Israel has long insisted that Iran is lying about its nuclear intentions. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, successfully penetrated and stolen Iran's clandestine nuclear archive, proving the Islamic republic never abandoned its aspirations of becoming a nuclear power and that it brazenly lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency, even after it vowed to come clean.

Iran said on Thursday it had resumed uranium enrichment at Fordow, stepping further away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers after the United States pulled out of it.

The pact bans the production of nuclear material at Fordow, a highly sensitive site that Iran hid from UN non-proliferation inspectors until its exposure in 2009.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Fordow on Sunday, Kamalvandi said.

Since May, Iran has begun to exceed limits on its nuclear capacity set by the pact in retaliation for US pressure on Tehran to negotiate restrictions on its ballistic missile program and support for terrorist proxy forces around the Middle East.

Iran says its measures are reversible if European signatories to the accord manage to restore its access to foreign trade promised under the nuclear deal but blocked by the reimposition of US sanctions.

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The Trump administration, which last year pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions on Iran, will let the work go forward by issuing waivers to sanctions that bar non-US firms from dealing with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the sources on condition of anonymity.

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While the waivers' renewal would allow non-proliferation work to continue at the Arak heavy water research reactor and the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, which the AEOI monitors, it may also signal that Washington is leaving the door open to diplomacy.

Under the 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States –Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions that had crippled its economy.

When US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the deal in May 2018, he re-imposed US sanctions in a "maximum pressure" campaign designed to force Iran to return to the negotiating table.

Trump wants a broader deal that would also limit Iran's missile program as well as its regional activities; Iran has demanded that the United States first resume complying with the 2015 deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

France, in particular, has sought to bring the two into a wider dialogue but has so far failed, suggesting neither is yet willing to abandon core elements of policy: the US belief that pressure will bring Iran to its knees, and Iran's refusal to capitulate to US pressure.

Under the 2015 deal, the Arak reactor was to be redesigned to render it unable to make bomb-grade plutonium under normal operation, while the Fordow plant was to stop enriching uranium and be converted into a nuclear, physics and technology center.

Chinese state-owned China National Nuclear Corp has done non-proliferation work at Arak, and Russia's Rosatom has done it at Fordow. Rosatom has also provided uranium fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

The US State Department had no immediate comment. Rosatom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A China National Nuclear Corp spokesman told Reuters on Thursday by email that it was "starting to cooperate with the Iranian side under guidance from Beijing on seeking a positive solution to the Iran nuclear problem." It did not provide further details.

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