JEDDAH: Iran’s parliament on Tuesday approved a bill requiring thegovernment to boost uranium enrichment by 20 percent and end UN inspectionsof its nuclear facilities.
The move is being viewed by analysts as a show of defiance after the recentkilling of prominent Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, anassassination for which Tehran has accused other countries of masterminding.
Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir said onTuesday that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was “desperate”to blame the Kingdom for anything negative that happened in Iran.
“Will he blame us for the next earthquake or flood?” he tweeted. “It is notthe policy of Saudi Arabia to engage in assassinations; unlike Iran, whichhas done so since the Khomeini Revolution in 1979.
“Ask us and ask many other countries who have lost many of their citizensdue to Iran’s criminal and illegal behavior,” Al-Jubeir added.
The latest bill would require another parliamentary vote to pass, as wellas approval by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog. Moreover,Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all nuclearpolicies.
“There is no doubt that this step constitutes a threat, raising it to 20percent means that it is close to building a nuclear bomb,” politicalanalyst and international relations scholar Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri told ArabNews. “The region is promised with a dark and unstable period.”
He said that the move indicated the Iranian regime’s insistence ondestabilizing the region, and its determination to win the race to obtainnuclear weapons.
Enriching uranium to 20 percent is below the threshold needed for nuclearweapons but higher than that required for civilian applications. It wouldalso commission new centrifuges at nuclear facilities at Natanz and theunderground Fordo site.
“Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons or its proximity to achieving thatgoal will be a great danger to the region, and countries will seek toprotect themselves, which will mean that everyone will resort to obtainingnuclear weapons. Fakhrizadeh’s death suggests that Iran was waiting forthis opportunity to escalate,” Al-Shehri added.
The official IRNA news agency said 251 lawmakers in the 290-seat chambervoted in favor, after which many began chanting slogans against the US andIsrael.
The bill would give European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal threemonths to ease sanctions on Iran’s key oil and gas sector, and to restoreits access to the international banking system.
“Many technical issues related to the nuclear bomb creation were notclosely followed up by P5+1 (the UN Security Council’s permanent members ofChina, France, Russia, the UK, and the US, plus Germany),” said Al-Shehri.
“We also should not forget that Iran was not clear and was preventing andlimiting inspections at its nuclear facilities, moreover, the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency did not do its work properly so that the world couldbreathe easily.
“Iran may have the nuclear bomb by now without the international communitytaking any action against it.
“The assassination of a scientist will not change the equation, even thestrikes on Iranian facilities would not affect the real Iranianinfrastructure.
“Iran wasn’t confronted the way that would make the world comfortable, northe way that a terrorist rogue state should have been treated as itdistributed terrorism through its militias, ballistic missiles, and dronesin the region,” he added.
Courtesy: Arab News