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		</div><p>Iran has started construction on a second nuclear reactor at its Bushehr power plant, a facility Tehran cites as its reason for breaking the enrichment limit set by the unravelling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.</p>
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<p>While celebrating the start of construction, the politics of the moment were not lost on Iranian officials as a US pressure campaign of sanctions blocks Tehran from selling its crude oil abroad.</p>
<p>These sanctions took effect after US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in May 2018, lighting the fuse for the tensions now gripping the wider Middle East.</p>
<figure id="attachment_143844" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-143844" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-143844" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/6E6942BE-1BCC-4B05-8F33-5649FAF8BC1C.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-143844" class="wp-caption-text">Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, at the Bushehr plant (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran</figcaption></figure>
<p>“It was not us who started breaking commitments, it was them who did not keep to their commitments and cannot accept the nuclear deal as a one-way road map,” Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said.</p>
<p>Bushehr is fuelled by uranium produced in Russia and is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).</p>
<p>But Iran began 4.5% enrichment in part to supply Bushehr despite the deal limiting it to 3.67%.</p>
<p>While this is still nowhere near weapons-grade levels of 90%, nonproliferation experts warn Iran’s growing stockpile and increasing enrichment will begin to shave off time from the estimated year Tehran would need to gather enough material for an atomic bomb.</p>
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<blockquote><p>The security of this power plant has been provided by the armed forces and its safety has been endorsed by international institutions</p></blockquote>
<p>Iran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes, though the deal was designed to limit its enrichment program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.</p>
<p>Those limits blocked its path to being able to have enough material for a bomb.</p>
<p>Concrete was poured into the prepared base of the second reactor in Bushehr, which is 700km (440 miles) south of Tehran, as journalists watched on Sunday.</p>
<p>Officials say the new reactor, and a third planned to be built, will each add over 1,000 megawatts to Iran’s power grid.</p>
<figure id="attachment_143846" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-143846" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-143846" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/428EA424-531B-4A45-B7BA-A8213A25F182.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-143846" class="wp-caption-text">Ali Akbar Salehi orders the concrete be poured at the Bushehr plant (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran</figcaption></figure>
<p>It is being built with assistance from Russia, which helped bring Bushehr’s first reactor online in 2011 after decades of delays.</p>
<p>Mr Salehi praised the plant’s operations.</p>
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<p>He said: “The security of this power plant has been provided by the armed forces and its safety has been endorsed by international institutions.”</p>
<p>This comment appeared to be a dig at Gulf Arab states opposed to Tehran, who earlier raised concerns to the IAEA that Bushehr was a risk to the wider region over earthquakes that routinely hit Iran.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman rejected claims by the US and Israel over allegations of nuclear material being discovered at an undeclared site outside of Tehran.</p>
<p>An IAEA meeting last week appeared to include discussions over what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described in a United Nations speech in 2018 as a “secret atomic warehouse”.</p>
<p>The IAEA has said Iran “carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” in a “structured program” through to the end of 2003.</p>
<p>Israeli officials allege material recovered from the warehouse came from that program.</p>
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<p>“The Zionist regime and others are trying to re-open this case. We don’t accept this and we condemn these efforts,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said.</p>
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