The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency confirmed on Wednesday reports that Iran has begun pumping uranium gas into advanced centrifuges in an underground area of the Natanz nuclear facility, in a violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency stated in a document to member countries that Iran is feeding uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) gas feedstock into the advanced IR-2m uranium-enriching centrifuges at the Natanz plant, a Reuters report said Wednesday.

“On 14 November 2020, the Agency verified that Iran began feeding UF₆ into the recently installed cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) in Natanz,” the IAEA report stated.

The 2015 nuclear deal allows Iran to use only first-generation IR-1 machines and those are the only machines allowed to be operated at the Natanz site.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Vienna that 174 centrifuges had been moved into a new area of the Natanz nuclear site and had recently begun operating.

He said that operation of centrifuges of that type was in violation of the nuclear deal Iran had signed with world powers in 2015 — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

Iran is already far past the deal’s limits on enriched uranium, Grossi noted.

According to a confidential document distributed to member countries and seen by The Associated Press last week, Iran as of Nov. 2 had a stockpile of 2,442.9 kilograms (5,385.7 pounds) of low-enriched uranium. That is up from 2,105.4 kilograms (4,641.6 pounds) reported on Aug. 25.

The nuclear deal signed by the United States, Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia allows Iran only to keep a stockpile of 202.8 kilograms (447 pounds).

Iran has also been continuing to enrich uranium to a purity of up to 4.5%, higher than the 3.67% allowed under the deal, the IAEA has said.

Iran has openly announced all its violations of the nuclear deal in advance, following President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to pull America out of the deal.

The deal promised Iran economic incentives in exchange for the curbs on its nuclear program. Since the U.S. withdrawal and imposition of new sanctions, Tehran has been putting pressure on the remaining parties with the violations to come up with new ways to offset the economy-crippling actions by Washington.

At the same time, the Iranian government has continued to allow IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear facilities — one of the main reasons the other signatories to the deal say it is worth preserving.

The deal was meant to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, something the country insists it does not intend to do.

After an explosion at the Natanz nuclear site in July, which Iran called sabotage, Tehran said it would build a new, more secure, structure in the mountains around the area.

Grossi confirmed to the AP in an interview last month that construction was underway at the site. He told reporters again on Wednesday that “there is movement, there is construction.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)