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By F. Brinley Bruton and Ali Arouzi
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has informed ambassadors from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia that it would stop implementing parts of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
The announcements came amid rising pressure on Tehran from the Trump White House.
In a speech broadcast on national television on the anniversary of America’s withdrawal from the deal, President Hassan Rouhani said the country would also resume high level enrichment of uranium if world powers did not keep their promises under the Obama-era agreement.
“We felt that the nuclear deal needs a surgery and the painkiller pills of the last year have been ineffective,” Rouhani said. “This surgery is for saving the deal, not destroying it.”
The 2015 deal saw sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. After the U.S. withdrew from the accord, Washington restored crippling sanctions on Iran, exacerbating a severe economic crisis.
Rouhani said the remaining signatories had 60 days to implement their promises to protect Iran’s oil and banking sectors from U.S. sanctions.
The Iranian government is facing growing economic pressure caused by U.S. sanctions that would punish multinationals for doing business with Iran. Faced with the choice of working with Iran or stiff American fines, most companies have chosen the latter.
The letters were delivered to envoys of countries still committed to the deal.
Rouhani also warned of a “strong reaction” if European leaders sought to impose more sanctions on Iran via the U.N. Security Council. He did not elaborate.
Western governments had long feared Iran’s atomic program could allow it to build nuclear weapons. Iran has always maintained its program is for peaceful purposes.
Under terms of the deal, Iran can keep a stockpile of no more than 660 pounds of low-enriched uranium. That’s compared to the 22,046 pounds of higher-enriched uranium it once had.
While his administration has acknowledged that Iran has abided by the agreement, President Donald Trump has made countering Iran’s power a foreign policy priority.
On Monday, the administration announced it had expedited the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and sent an Air Force bomber squadron to the Persian Gulf.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called off a planned visit to Germany to fly to Iraq. The Trump administration alleges that Iran poses a growing threat to U.S. forces and interests in the Middle East.
The U.S. has also ended waivers for nations buying Iranian crude oil, a key source of revenue for Iran’s government.
And on April 8, the U.S. announced it was designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a foreign terrorist organization.
The “main signal” the Iranian government was trying to send Wednesday was that “they don’t want to accept the status quo,” according to Aniseh Tabrizi, an Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
While seeking to contain Iran, the U.S. moves could end up empowering hardliners within the country, Tabrizi said.
Rouhani, who is seen as a reformer, had staked his political future on the deal and engaging with the West — arguing that signing a nuclear deal would boost the economy.
Now he and other reformers were “more isolated that ever,” and paying the price for trusting the West and the U.S. specifically, Tabrizi said.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif blamed not only the U.S. for the country’s decision, but also other signatories of the deal.
“The European Union and rest of the world community have been incapable of resisting the U.S. pressures,” he told reporters. “The Islamic republic sees it as expedient to stop implementing some of its commitments and some of the measures it had voluntarily taken within the nuclear deal for the time being.”
Zarif spoke during a visit to Moscow — a sign of the widening gap between the U.S. and regional allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates versus Iran and its partners such as Syria and Russia.
“Tehran is an old and reliable partner of Moscow in the region,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. “The Russian-Iranian political dialogue is progressively developing.”
F. Brinley Bruton reported from London, and Ali Arouzi from Tehran.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed.