Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran's decision to boost its nuclear programme means that the Islamic Republic plans to develop nuclear weapons, and he vowed to stop Tehran from doing this.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has previously confirmed that its inspectors were monitoring the activities at the Fordow facility and that the director-general, Argentina's Rafael Mariano Grossi, would submit a report to the organisation's member states later in the day.
Israel's response came in the wake of a report from Mehr, Iran's semi-official news agency, citing a government spokesman that Iran had resumed 20 percent uranium enrichment.
Iran's decision to boost enrichment was stipulated by the November bill dubbed "The Strategic Measure for the Removal of Sanctions", which boosted Iranian activities following the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Tehran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67 percent under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), so the Islamic Republic significantly cut its nuclear material reserves. However, Iran made some changes to what it was allowed to do after the US left the accord in 2018, re-imposing sanction on Tehran.
Right before the US withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, Netanyahu made a famous "Iran lied" presentation, claiming that Tehran tried to use its supposedly peaceful nuclear programme to weaponise research in a bid to create a nuclear bomb.
