Iran said Monday (June 17th) it will surpass from June 27th its uranium stockpile limit set under the nuclear deal with world powers, AFP reported.
"Today the countdown to pass the 300 kilogrammes reserve of enriched uranium has started and in 10 days time... we will pass this limit," Iran's atomic energy organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said at a press conference broadcast live.
On May 8th, President Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran would stop observing restrictions on its stocks of enriched uranium and heavy water agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal.
Uranium enriched to much higher levels than Iran's current stocks can be used as the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, while heavy water is a source of plutonium, which can be used as an alternative way to produce a warhead.
Tensions between Iran and the US have escalated in recent months, with Washington bolstering its military presence in the region and blacklisting Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
The US has also blamed Iran for last week's attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, a charge Tehran has denied as "baseless".
