Iran Parliament Warns of 90% Uranium Enrichment If U.S. Resumes Strikes

Iran’s parliament speaker threatened Tuesday to escalate the country’s uranium enrichment to 90 percent — weapons-grade purity — if the United States resumes military strikes, as the fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran showed new signs of collapse and President Trump prepared to fly to Beijing seeking China’s help to pressure Tehran.

The warning, delivered by parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, marks the most direct nuclear threat Tehran has issued since the ceasefire took hold, according to Euronews. Ghalibaf declared that Washington had “no alternative” but to accept Iran’s 14-point proposal and warned that any return to U.S. strikes would remove the constraints preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.

Iran’s Current Nuclear Status

The threat lands against an already alarming backdrop. Iran currently holds approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent — just below the 90 percent threshold that defines weapons-grade material. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to verify the status of Iran’s stockpile since February 28, when Tehran suspended IAEA inspector access as a pressure tactic during the lead-up to hostilities.

The combination of a large unverified stockpile and a parliament openly threatening to cross the enrichment threshold has sharpened concerns among nonproliferation experts that Iran could move toward weapons-grade production quickly if it chose to do so. At 60 percent enrichment, Iran is already far beyond any civilian nuclear program justification; the technical step from 60 to 90 percent is significantly shorter than the step from natural uranium to 60 percent.

Ghalibaf’s 14-Point Proposal

Ghalibaf’s statement was paired with an assertion that Tehran’s 14-point proposal represents the ceiling of what Iran will offer diplomatically. The speaker did not specify all the proposal’s terms in his public remarks, but Iranian officials have previously described the package as requiring an end to all U.S. sanctions, war reparations for American strikes, and formal recognition of Iranian rights over the Strait of Hormuz — conditions the Trump administration has already rejected as “a piece of garbage.”

The parliament’s posture is significant because it sets a domestic political constraint on any Iranian negotiator: any deal that falls short of the 14-point framework will face parliamentary opposition, and any future enrichment restraint agreed by the executive branch could be overridden by a parliament that has now publicly committed to escalation as a response to resumed strikes.

Pentagon Considers Renaming Operation

On the U.S. side, the Pentagon is considering renaming Operation Epic Fury — the designation under which the initial strikes on Iran were conducted — to “Operation Sledgehammer” if the ceasefire collapses and Trump orders resumed strikes, NBC News reported. The renaming would not be cosmetic: under the War Powers Act, the clock for congressional notification resets with a new operational designation, providing the administration additional time before facing a mandatory authorization vote.

The report indicates that Pentagon planners are actively working through the legal and operational architecture of a second strike campaign, not merely contingency-planning for a remote possibility. The War Powers Act maneuver, if executed, would give the administration roughly 60 additional days before Congress could compel a formal authorization debate — a window the administration would likely use to seek a rapid negotiated outcome or a military decision.

Trump’s Beijing Summit

The diplomatic track is now heavily focused on Beijing. Trump departs Wednesday for a May 14–15 summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the Iran situation is expected to dominate the agenda, according to The National News. China purchases more than 80 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, making Beijing the single largest financial underwriter of the Iranian government’s ability to sustain an extended confrontation with the United States.

Trump has argued publicly and privately that China can end the standoff quickly if Xi chooses to curtail oil purchases — a form of financial pressure that would be far more immediate than any additional U.S. sanctions. The administration has already signaled that Iran-China oil flows are a target: the Treasury Department’s OFAC designations last week sanctioned 12 entities and individuals for facilitating IRGC crude sales to Chinese refiners, with Treasury Secretary Bessent explicitly framing China’s purchases as funding “the largest state sponsor of terrorism.”

Whether Xi is willing to constrain Iranian oil imports — a step that would hurt Chinese refiners and complicate Beijing’s own energy security — in exchange for trade or Taiwan concessions from Washington remains the central unknown of the summit. Chinese officials have publicly called for a diplomatic resolution while continuing to purchase Iranian crude at elevated volumes.

The Diplomatic Gap Widens

The nuclear threat and the Pentagon renaming reports together suggest both governments are preparing contingencies for renewed hostilities even as formal ceasefire channels remain open. Iran’s parliament has now publicly committed to a nuclear escalation response; the Pentagon has reportedly begun planning the legal and operational architecture for a second campaign.

The ceasefire that paused the initial U.S. strikes has survived several near-collapses, but each successive Iranian counterproposal has moved further from the American framework rather than closer to it. The China diplomacy angle represented by the Beijing summit is now the most significant remaining lever that has not yet been fully applied — and whether Xi uses that leverage, or declines to do so, will likely determine whether the ceasefire survives through the end of May.

For now, the IAEA remains unable to verify Iran’s uranium stockpile, the parliament has publicly threatened weapons-grade enrichment, and the Pentagon is working through what a renamed, legally reset strike campaign would look like. The ceasefire is technically in effect.

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Euronews, NBC News, and The National News reporting cited above. IAEA stockpile figures reflect publicly available agency data as of the most recent verified inspection.