Iran completed the transfer of a cascade of advanced centrifuges from a plant above ground to an underground site, said a report released on Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“They finished installing one of the three cascades, and they have started installing a second cascade,” said a senior diplomat, according to Reuters.
The move underground, which can protect the plant from aerial attacks, is another Iranian breach of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers—notably, the agreement only allowed the underground plant at Natanz to use first-generation machines.
The Trump administration withdrew from the deal in May 2018 and imposed harsh sanctions on Iran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign.
According to the IAEA, Iran has a quantity of low-enriched uranium much higher than the limit set under the deal.
Separately, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz called on the world to align against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
“The kingdom stresses the dangers of Iran’s regional project, its interference in other countries, its fostering of terrorism, its fanning the flames of sectarianism and calls for a decisive stance from the international community against Iran that guarantees a drastic handling of its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction and develop its ballistic-missiles program,” said the king, as reported by Reuters.
