Senior Iranian Official Hossein Naghavi-Hosseini: We Will Gradually Reduce Commitment to JCPOA Until It Is Rendered Non-Existent, But We Will Not Withdraw from It

Hossein Naghavi-Hosseini, the Spokesman of the Iranian Majles' Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy, said in a July 29, 2019 interview on Ofogh TV (Iran) that Iran must under no circumstances withdraw from the JCPOA, because there would be no advantage to doing so, but that it will gradually reduce its commitment to the JCPOA's conditions until the agreement is rendered practically non-existent. He said that Iran is effectively doing this already by enriching uranium past 3.5%, by installing new centrifuges in its reactors, and by having activated the Arak heavy water reactor. He also said that Iran will definitely move on to working with plutonium despite the JCPOA's prohibition of doing so. Hosseini claimed that Iran needs to enrich uranium to high levels of enrichment for purposes of nuclear propellants, and he said that Iran has the technology to do this and that it will be using IR-8 centrifuges. He added that Iran will not hold further negotiations with the United States under any circumstances and that any interaction between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and American officials has likely been authorized.