Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Monday, February 19 (30 days) that Iran will continue to enrich uranium beyond its limit.

Grossi added that for the first time after a year, he plans to visit Tehran, the capital of Iran, next month, and the purpose of this trip is to resolve the differences between the factions involved in Iran’s nuclear program.

After the foreign ministers of the European Union presented information on Iran’s nuclear activities, Reuters news agency said that although Iran’s uranium enrichment rate has decreased slightly since the end of last year, Tehran is still enriching uranium at a high speed. According to him, Iran produces about seven kilograms of uranium with a purity of 60% every month.

Enriching uranium with a purity of 60% will bring the material close to the level of nuclear weapons production, and this level of enriched uranium will not be needed for commercial purposes to produce nuclear energy. Iran has denied having nuclear weapons. However, no other country has enriched uranium to this extent without intending to produce nuclear weapons.

According to the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, which has now been dissolved, Iran was allowed to enrich its uranium to a purity of 3.67 percent. However, after Donald Trump, the former US president, unilaterally withdrew from this agreement in May 2018, he gradually imposed severe economic sanctions on Tehran, and Iran also violated the nuclear agreement.

A year later, Tehran retaliated by increasing its nuclear activities in violation of the agreement. But Tehran has always claimed that its nuclear program has “peaceful” purposes.

Between the months of June and November last year, Iran reduced its uranium enrichment by three kilograms per month. However, according to the report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran, by the end of 2023, uranium enrichment had increased to nine kilograms per month.

The International Atomic Energy Agency warned at the end of 2023 that if Tehran enriches its uranium with a purity of more than 60%, the country will have enough material to produce three nuclear bombs.

Grossi said that Iranian officials have recently said that they have all the materials necessary to build a nuclear weapon and emphasized that such statements can be monitored.

And he said that this surveillance is due to the current situation in the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

_{Part of this report was taken from Reuters.}