Iran threatens to abandon more nuclear commitments in 60 days

The decision comes a year after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear deal.

Iran said on Sunday it would further scale back its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, raising its uranium enrichment level beyond agreed levels to produce fuel for power plants.
The announcement signaled a growing challenge to escalating US sanctions pressure.
In a news conference, senior Iranian officials said Tehran would keep reducing its commitments every 60 days, unless signatories of the pact moved to protect it from US sanctions, but they left the door open to diplomacy.
Before the deal was sealed, Iran produced 20 per cent enriched uranium needed to fuel its Tehran reactor and the level of enrichment for its southern Bushehr nuclear power plant was 5 per cent.
"We will enrich uranium based on our needs ... right now we don't need to enrich uranium needed for Tehran reactor," said Behrouz Kamalvandi, Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman.
"We will enrich uranium to the level that is needed for the Bushehr reactor."
Long-tense relations between Tehran and Washington took a turn for the worse in May 2018 when US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal reached before he took office, and reimposed sanctions.
Under the pact, Iran can enrich uranium to 3.67 per cent fissile material, well below the 20 per cent it was reaching before the deal and the roughly 90 per cent suitable for a nuclear weapon.

• MENA