Iran was poised Thursday to begin work on advanced centrifuges that will enrich uranium faster as the 2015 nuclear deal unravels further and a last-minute French proposal offering a USD 15-billion line of credit to compensate Iran for not being able to sell its crude oil abroad because of US sanctions looked increasingly unlikely.
Meanwhile, Iran released seven crew members from a detained British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero in a goodwill gesture and the mariners flew out of Iran, the ship's owner said.
Iran has yet to say officially what exact steps it will take as a deadline it gave Europeans to salvage the deal is to expire on Friday. However, centrifuges that speed enrichment would further shorten the time Tehran would need to have enough material available to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.
Under the deal, which has steadily unraveled after President Donald Trump's unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the accord last year, experts thought Iran would need about a year to reach that point.
Iran's atomic energy agency was to make an announcement on Saturday detailing its next step, which President Hassan Rouhani described as highly significant, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency and other Iranian media. The details would be unveiled at a press conference in Tehran, the reports said.
The US has continued its effort to choke off Iran's crude oil sales abroad, a crucial source of government revenue.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who continues a whirlwind global diplomatic tour, insists his country will do everything it can to keep those sales going, though he described US sanctions in an angry tweet Thursday as the equivalent of a "jail warden."
"We will sell our oil, one way or the other," Zarif told Russian broadcaster RT in a recently aired interview. "The United States will not be able to prevent that."
Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have been growing since Trump's pullout from the nuclear deal, which saw Tehran agree to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Trump subsequently re-imposed old sanctions on Iran and created new ones, going as far as targeting Iranian officials like Zarif and Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Meanwhile, mysterious oil tanker attacks struck near the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, attacks that the U.S. blames on Iran. Tehran denies it was involved.
Iran also shot down a US military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers as America deployed nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, advanced fighter jets and more troops to the region.
The US has sought to seize an Iranian oil tanker, the Adrian Darya-1, now thought by analysts to be off the Syrian coast despite a pledge by Tehran that its cargo wasn't bound there.
In his speech late Wednesday, Rouhani said Tehran would soon begin work on research and development of "all kinds" of centrifuges that enrich uranium by rapidly spinning uranium hexafluoride gas.
Iran has begun breaking limits of the deal, such as just creeping beyond its 3.67 per cent-enrichment limit and its stockpile rules.
Using advanced centrifuges speeds up enrichment and Iranian officials already have raised the idea of enriching to 20 per cent a small technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent.
Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denies it seeks an atomic bomb. However, Western nations have pointed to previous Iranian research into a weapons program that U.N. experts say largely ended in 2003.
France in recent days had pushed the idea of offering Iran a USD 15 billion credit to sell its oil, though details remain unclear and it appeared the deal wouldn't come through before Iran's deadline Friday.
That appears to show Iran trying to resort to its own maximum pressure campaign through the nuclear program to get what it wants, said Henry Rome, an analyst for the Eurasia Group.
"Iran's plan appears to be provocative but reversible," Rome said. "Tehran is building leverage, not a bomb." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime hawk on Iran, called on the world to increase its pressure on Tehran before flying to London for meetings with British officials on Thursday.
While Trump maintains he's open for North Korea-style talks with Iran, his administration has continually upped its pressure on the Islamic Republic.
On Wednesday, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on an oil shipping network it alleged had ties to the Guard and offered up to USD 15 million for anyone with information that disrupts the Guard's operations.
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