The Bushehr nuclear facility inside Iran (via financialtribune.com).
The Iranian parliament voted to expand the deployment of advanced nuclear centrifuges at its underground Natanz facility last Friday, drawing condemnation from Western nations on Monday. The plan to add three new cascades of the IR-2 centrifuges is a violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), involving the installation of thousands of the new centrifuges in order to enrich more nuclear fuel to higher levels more quickly. It’s Iran’s latest snub of the nuclear deal from which the United States withdrew in 2018, but in which France, Germany and the UK still abide. The International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) previously announced last month that Iran was enriching uranium to higher levels than allowed by the deal.
A joint statement by the three European parties known as the E3 warned that Iran’s latest move “would jeopardize our shared efforts to preserve the JCPOA and also risks compromising the important opportunity for a return to diplomacy with the incoming U.S. administration.” US presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to return to the Obama-era nuclear deal after taking office, although the unclaimed assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on November 27th has soured Iran’s taste for diplomacy. A mysterious explosion at the above-ground Natanz centrifuge assembly facility on July 2 also caused extensive damage and further setbacks to the rogue nuclear program.
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The E3’s statement came as the Iranian government announced the death of Abdolrasool Ostovar, a brigadier general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and the deputy commander of former IRGC leader Qassam Suleimani for Iranian operations in Syria. Ostovar played a key role in the IRGC Qud’s Force Syria program, including the partnership with Lebanese Hezbollah and the development of Iranian-controlled militias. The IRGC’s operations in Syria has been the target of thousands of Israeli strikes since the early years of the civil war in 2012, with Ostovar overseeing a network of personnel bases and weapons depots that stretch from the Iraqi border to Damascus to the border of the Israeli Golan Heights. Ostovar reportedly contracted the novel coronavirus while visiting Iraq in September of this year before falling into a coma and dying last night in the Iranian capital of Tehran.
We ask the global FAI family to be in continued prayer for the safety of the people of Iran and the greater Middle East, as the Iranian regime’s policies continue to ratchet up tensions in the region and place millions of lives in danger. We pray that the violence and hegemony of the Iranian regime would be restrained, that Western, Israeli and Arab leaders would be granted divine wisdom and courage in their approach to Iran, and that the Lord would continue to bless the underground Iranian churches as they continue to make disciples and rapidly multiply.
Maranatha.
