Iran on Sunday announced that it will no longer abide by the 2015 Nuclear deal, reports Iranian state television. According to the 2015 Nuclear Deal, which is officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five permanent members of the security council plus Germany, Iran had agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. It also was required to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for next 13 years.
The announcement comes amid escalating tensions in the Gulf region after the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. Earlier, US President Donald Trump had unilaterally pulled out the United States from the Obama-era deal.
Although, French president Emmanuel Macron last year tried to bring both Washington and Tehran on the negotiation table, the US-Iran relations moved south.
Moreover, in the aftermath of Soleimani’s killing, Trump has warned Iran that the US has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran, which has vowed “severe revenge”, carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani.
Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran’s elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq’s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.