Trump warns Iran to 'be careful' as it prepares to ramp-up uranium enrichment

Donald Trump has warned Iran to “be careful” after the Islamic Republic threatened to enrich uranium to 20% purity after it breached the limits established by the 2015 nuclear deal during the previous week.

Iran is slowly undoing the restrictions imposed by the nuclear deal and the option of enriching uranium to a higher level of purity is “among the options considered”, said the Islamic Republic News Agency on Monday.

Tehran threatened in May to abandon some of the commitments it had made under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed with China, US, UK, European Union, France, Germany, and Russia after Washington had abandoned it unilaterally roughly a year before.

Iran said it would no longer consider itself bound to the agreement if Europe failed to meet a 7 July deadline to deliver a solution to the pressure from sanctions imposed by Trump on various sectors of its economy.

Speaking on Sunday, before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said: "Iran better be careful because you enrich for one reason and I won't tell you what the reason is. But it's no good they better be careful."

Iran announced on Sunday that it ha begun enriching uranium past 3.67%, but did not say until what level it would continue to enrich.

"Iran is doing a lot of bad things," Trump said. "The way they want it they would have automatic rights to have nuclear weapons. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon."

Stephen Innes managing partner at Vanguard Markets said on Monday: “The US will maintain a maximum pressure campaign against Iran, but the real flashpoint is the nuclear deal. Iran has already stockpiled more enriched uranium than the country was supposed to.

“While Middle East GPR Indexes (geopolitical risk index) are soaring through the roof, the modest dollar price per barrel transmission suggests by historical Middle East escalation standards, that these risks remain underpriced.

“Macron is looking for a diplomatic solution, but any failure could jeopardise European efforts to save the accord, and when diplomatic efforts are exhausted, it could trigger an aggressive US response.”