Iran says enriching uranium to five percent

TEHRAN: Iran said on Saturday it is now enriching uranium to five percent, after a series of steps back from its commitments under a troubled 2015 accord with major powers.

The deal set a 3.67 percent limit for uranium enrichment but Iran announced it would no longer respect it after Washington unilaterally abandoned the agreement last year and reimposed crippling sanctions.

“Based on our needs and what we have been ordered, we are currently producing five percent,” Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told a press conference.

He said Iran has the “capacity to produce five percent, twenty percent, sixty percent, or any percentage” of enriched uranium, a claim often repeated by Tehran. Uranium enrichment is the sensitive process that produces fuel for nuclear power plants but also, in highly extended form, the fissile core for a warhead.