Iran to forego limit on centrifuges

Iran announced a further rollback of its commitments to the troubled international nuclear accord Sunday amid anger over the US killing of a top commander which also prompted Iraq’s parliament to demand the departure of American troops.

While vast crowds gathered in Iran’s second city of Mashhad as Qasem Soleimani’s remains were returned home, the Tehran government said it would forego the ‘limit on the number of centrifuges’ it had pledged to honour in the 2015  agreement which was already in deep trouble.

The announcement was yet another sign of the fallout from Friday’s killing of Soleimani in Baghdad in a drone strike ordered by president Donald Trump, which has inflamed US-Iraqi relations and among the rival camps in Washington.

Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany has been hanging by a thread since the US withdrew unilaterally from it two years ago.

Meanwhile, Trump threatened ‘major retaliation’ Sunday if Iran avenges the killing of a key military commander and he warned of massive economic sanctions against ally Iraq if the country expels US troops based there.

Trump bluntly warned Iran against taking vengeance, repeating his insistence that US bombing targets could include Iran’s cultural heritage sites. Critics say that would qualify as a war crime under international law.

‘If they do anything there will be major retaliation,’ Trump told reporters on Air Force One, as he flew back to Washington — and a looming Senate impeachment trial — from vacation in Florida.

Trump had already threatened bombing of 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US troops and interests in the region.

European countries have been pushing for talks with Iran to salvage the deal, inviting Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif to Brussels for talks, but the prospect of progress seemed remote after the government’s statement on Sunday night.

‘Iran’s nuclear programme no longer faces any limitation in the operational field’, said the statement.

This extends to Iran’s capacity for enriching uranium, the level of enrichment carried out, the amount enriched, and other research and development, it said.

‘As of now Iran’s nuclear programme will continue solely based on its technical needs,’ it added.

A sea of black-clad Iranians on Monday mourned the top commander killed in last week’s US drone strike that inflamed tensions across the Middle East, as NATO was set to discuss the spiralling crisis.

Iranians clutching ‘Down with USA’ signs and portraits of their hero Qasem Soleimani massed as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over prayers for the slain head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.

Soleimani’s daughter Zeinab Soleimani told mourners the United States would face a “dark day” for her father’s death.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas, who was making his first trip to Iran since taking up his role in 2017, said at the funeral that ‘resistance against the American dominance will not be broken.’

The targeted killing of 62-year-old Soleimani ordered by Trump saw the Islamic republic vow ‘severe revenge’ before Tehran also took a further step back from the already tattered 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.

In an escalating war of words that has heightened international concern and rattled financial markets, Trump threatened yet more ‘major retaliation’ if Tehran hits back, including strikes on Iranian cultural sites.

Iraq’s parliament meanwhile demanded the government expel the 5,200 American troops stationed in the country in response to the Baghdad drone attack which also killed top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Trump has warned that a forced departure of US troops would prompt sanctions against Iraq that would ‘make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame’.

NATO ambassadors were to hold an extraordinary meeting at Brussels headquarters to ‘address the situation in the region,’ said an official of the alliance, which has been forced to suspend its training mission in Iraq.

Germany, France and Britain urged Iran to refrain from taking ‘further violent actions or support for them’, or from steps that further weaken the 2015 nuclear deal.

‘It is crucial now to de-escalate,’ German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Emmanuel Macron and British prime minister Boris Johnson said in a joint statement Sunday.

The nuclear deal had offered Tehran relief from sanctions in return for curbs to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons — but Trump’s withdrawal from it last year has dramatically weakened the agreement.

The European leaders also pleaded with all parties to not jeopardise the on-going battle against the Islamic State jihadist group, which has lost its self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ but whose militants remain active.

The raw emotions sparked by the US killing of Soleimani were on full display in Tehran, where mourners formed a sea of black, dotted with red Shia flags and white signs, in what state television said was a ‘several million-strong’ turnout.

As they marched down a main artery of the Iranian capital, the mourners chanted ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’.

Khamenei appeared to cry as he prayed over the flag-draped coffins containing the remains of Soleimani and five other ‘martyrs’ killed in the strike.

The supreme leader was flanked by president Hassan Rouhani and other top political and military figures as well as Soleimani’s son and the slain general’s replacement as Quds commander, Esmail Qaani.

‘Down with USA,’ read a placard held up by a young woman wearing a black chadour, while another sign, held aloft by a man, called for ‘#hard_revenge’.

‘We must give a crushing response,’ one of the mourners said.

‘We must target whatever military base they have in the region,’ said the 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

‘We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.’

Soleimani was one of Iran’s most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

He was also the key figure behind Tehran’s alliances across a region where Iran is in often deadly rivalry with US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister on Monday appealed for calm after a ‘very dangerous’ escalation following the killing of a top Iranian general in a US drone strike.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net