Hundreds of Centrifuges Deployed in Response to American Sanctions

Iran began feeding gas into hundreds of new generation centrifuges in response to the United States’ imposition of a new set of sanctions targeting its oil sale, the Iranian foreign minister said. 
“These irrational measures and insane sanctions … have no effect at all,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Tuesday, ISNA reported. 
The US Treasury and the US State Department imposed sanctions on a total of six companies, four based in Hong Kong, one in Singapore, and one in the United Arab Emirates, which they said helped to sell tens of millions of dollars in Iranian oil and petrochemical products to East Asia, according to Reuters. 
The actions freeze US-based assets and generally bar Americans from dealing with them. Others that engage in certain transactions with the targeted firms also risk being sanctioned.
Tehran has been under tough American sanctions since former US president Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The new sanctions come while negotiations on the revival of the agreement are potentially entering a new phase.
Talks in the Austrian capital Vienna, which began in April 2021, were stalled in March, but the European Union coordinator has put forward a draft that he hopes could address outstanding issues and pave the way for the conclusion of an agreement. 
“While we are reviewing the text in the capitals, trying to agree on returning to the negotiating table, the US introduced a new [set of sanctions] yesterday,” Amir-Abdollahian said. 
He said the Americans must not assume that they can win concessions out of Iran at the negotiating table through such measures. 
“If the US decides to continue this course of action, our hands will never be tied,” he stressed. 
The US must put aside its excessive demands because Tehran favors logic and dialogue and is serious about reaching a strong agreement, according to the minister. 
US Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement that Washington continues to pursue the path of diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA. 
“Until such time as Iran is ready to return to full implementation of its commitments, we will continue to enforce sanctions on the illicit sale of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals,” he contended.  

Final Phases

Amir-Abdollahian said the US had already tried to press Iran into giving more concessions by sponsoring an anti-Iran resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors. 
The resolution, which accused Iran of not cooperating with the UN nuclear watchdog, was adopted in early June. 
“We gave our decisive response to the American side at the time,” he said. 
Iran began injecting uranium gas into advanced centrifuges and disconnected some of the IAEA cameras monitoring its sites beyond the obligations of the Safeguards Agreement in reaction to the resolution. 
Following the announcement of new sanctions, Iran said on Monday that it was beginning to feed gas into hundreds of new advanced IR-1 and IR-6 machines after notifying the agency. 
Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the decision was made in line with “the Strategic Action to Lift Sanctions and Protect the Nation’s Rights,” a law passed by parliament in 2020.
“We have taken several measures in the past to increase the number of IR-6 machines to 1000 as required by the parliamentary law… and now we are nearing the final phases,” he said, adding that plans for launching other machines are underway.