Iranian Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohammad Eslami and Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA Kazem Gharibabadi attend the opening of the IAEA General Conference at their headquarters in Vienna, Austria, September 20, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

i24 News – Tehran’s nuclear program is back under the spotlight as the UN’s atomic energy watchdog holds its annual general conference.

Negotiations to revive a 2015 landmark agreement with world powers that curbed Iran’s nuclear power are at a standstill, while Tehran continues to step up its activities, according to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report.

Under the 2015 deal with Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States, Iran agreed not to enrich uranium above 3.67 percent, well below the 90-percent threshold required for a nuclear weapon.

But since May 2019, Iran has announced successive breaches of the deal’s enrichment levels in reaction to a US withdrawal from the agreement.

In addition, Iran started producing uranium metal, “a key material used to make nuclear weapon cores, under a civil use pretext,” nonproliferation analyst Andrea Stricker detailed.

Iran also made progress since the 2015 deal in operating advanced centrifuges — machines used for uranium enrichment.

Experts note Iran would need to take further additional steps, besides enriching uranium, to manufacture a bomb.

“Even if Iran produced enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, it would need to convert that material into the nuclear core, and package that with explosives and other components to make a nuclear device,” said Eric Brewer of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“Additional steps would be required to fit that device on top of a missile and have it work correctly,” he told AFP.