Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Wednesday that his country would begin to enrich uranium in any amount that we want as early as Sunday.

The latest escalation in a dramatic confrontation between Tehran and the United States comes just days after Iran said it had blown past the uranium stockpile limits established in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal , an agreement with six world powers that was meant to scale back its nuclear ability for a decade in exchange for an end in economic sanctions. But President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear accord last year after deriding it as defective and insane, and the White House has since imposed a series of new and crippling sanctions on Tehran .

Irans economy has suffered dramatically as a result, and Rouhani has been pushing the limits of the accord in an effort to secure some financial relief. According to Reuters, Irans oil exports, its main source of income, fell to 300,000 barrels per day . When the U.S. pulled out of the nuclear deal in April 2018, Iran shipped more than 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

The 2015 deal caps enrichment at 3.67 percent, a level referred to as low-enriched uranium, which can be used for nuclear power generation, and mandates that Iran never has more than 300 kilograms, or about 660 pounds, of the material on hand. Foreign Policy reported that many experts believe it would take the country about a year to create enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.

While Iran has repeatedly said it does not want to craft a nuclear bomb , any efforts to make highly-enriched uranium could endanger whats left of the 2015 deal, The New York Times reported. Rouhani has signaled that he wants other European countries privy to the accord to step in and help relieve the sanctions so Iran can continue to abide by the deals provisions, but the uptick in rhetoric reflects his hard-line approach to the Trump administration.