adminBRUSSELS. — Speaking during an urgent meeting of NATO countries, the bloc’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said all the member-states have agreed that Iran should never acquire a nuclear weapon.
Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump rushed to Twitter to state that Iran would never be allowed to gain access to a nuclear weapon.
The agenda of the meeting has focused on the situation in Iraq following the killing of Major-General Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds Force, in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport on Friday.
The killing prompted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to warn that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a heinous crime. Baghdad has condemned the attack as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, with the national parliament voting to expel foreign troops from the country.
Trump, in turn, threatened Iraq with “sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” saying US troops will not leave the country unless America is paid back for its “very extraordinarily expensive airbase” located there.
On Sunday, Iran announced that it would be rolling back its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal amid escalating tensions with Washington over the killing of a senior Iranian military commander.
Moscow, another signatory of the JCPOA, said yesterday that it is not concerned by Iran’s rollback on limitations set by the JCPOA. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated that Iran’s decision does not present any threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, because the country has maintained contact with the IAEA.
Iran began enriching its uranium stockpiles to the level of five percent, above the 3,67 percent limit outlined in the JCPOA, by November. However, this amount is well below the levels required to produce a nuclear bomb.
Tensions between Iran and the US and Iran have escalated over the past two weeks amid violence in Iraq, beginning with a rocket attack on a US base in Kirkuk and culminating in the US assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Maj-Gen Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on Friday. — Sputnik News.
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