World News for Students of English

16-09-2019 07:00

The USA, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia made a deal with Iran in 2015. For Iran, the deal meant that they could not enrich uranium.

When you enrich uranium, you can make a nuclear weapon from it. For the USA and EU, the deal meant that they could not put sanctions on Iran.

Last year, Trump started pulling out from the deal. He put sanctions on Iran which was difficult for the Iranian economy. When the USA was ignoring the deal, Iran started to ignore it, too. They started enriching uranium.

Iran had now has so much enriched uranium that they can make a weapon from it. They say that they do not want to do this, but they are asking European countries to save the deal. Unlike Iran or the USA, Europe is still respecting the deal.

Difficult words: enrich (make more powerful), uranium (a radioactive material which can be used to make electricity or bombs – but it must be enriched first), sanction (a block, doing something which is economically bad to another country).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.