On Monday, Iran announced that they surpassed the uranium enrichment limit set in place by the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and several other nations.
According to a spokesman for the nation’s atomic energy agency, Iran has currently reached close to 4.5% enrichment. This violates the agreement’s limit of 3.67%, but is far below the 90% of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.
The Iranian government claims that the uranium enrichment is being undertaken for “peaceful” purposes and to expand the nation’s energy supply. Many, however, view the move as a direct response to heated rhetoric and threats of warfare from President Donald Trump and National Security Adviser John Bolton.
In recent weeks, the U.S. has accused Iran of engineering an attack on six civilian oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. Multiple allies, including Germany and Japan, have expressed significant doubt in the Trump administration’s claim. Tensions reached a new height between the U.S. and Iran when an American surveillance drone was downed by the Iranian military. Trump threatened to militarily engage with Iran in retaliation, but ultimately decided not to do so.
Read more: Iran's Uranium Enrichment Breaks Nuclear Deal Limit. Here's What That Means
Prior to the threats of war, the Iranian government voiced their dissatisfaction with Trump’s abrupt decision to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reimpose economic sanctions on the country.
WGBH News analyst and CEO of the GroundTruth Project Charlie Sennott believes the Trump administration's actions are confounding. If anything, Sennott says, the Trump administration’s posturing towards Iran is more likely to push them towards acquiring nuclear weapons while strengthening the country’s autocratic theocracy.
“I honestly wonder what is the strategy out of the White House,” Sennott said during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday. “The sanctions are really tough, they’re really crippling the Iranian economy [and] they’re definitely punishing the people, which I think often strengthens the theocratic regime.”
Though Iran has always been a difficult partner for western allies in the Middle East, many were hopeful that the 2015 deal would begin a new era of normalization between Iran and the United States. Even without the United States, every other signatory to the 2015 deal has committed to upholding it. On Monday, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said that if Iran is still committed to the deal, then the German government would do its part to maintain the agreements forged four years ago.
“The ball is clearly in Iran’s court. We want to preserve the deal. For this, parties must stick to it,” a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
A spokesman for French President Emmanuel Macron also said that Macron and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have agreed to enter into talks to “engage in a de-escalation of tensions related to Iranian nuclear issue.”
According to Sennott, the scrambling from every other nation party to the nuclear deal to salvage it should send a powerful message to Trump. He’s found that while the Trump administration has retreated to a nationalistic approach to world relations that emphasizes military might, much of the developed world is more focused on coalition building and diplomacy as a means to work with each other.
“The real game in the world right now — the big game and the long game — is diplomacy,” Sennott said. “I just don’t see an administration that’s taking the messaging and the thinking as seriously on diplomacy as they do on the theatrics and the tweeting and the posturing of military strength.”