Anti-Iran res. at IAEA BoG brought negative consequences

The Russian Permanent Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna Tuesday in its Twitter account quoted Mikhail Ulyanov who also leads the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks as saying, “Poorly thought-through anti-Iran resolution at the June Board brought its negative consequences. Not only has it complicated Vienna talks situation but also created extra challenge for IAEA in terms of JCPOA-related verification measures.” 

“We clearly remember warning our Western colleagues about consequences of their rash actions & called to forego this resolution scheme. #Iran’s decision to remove cameras & monitoring equipment was a direct reaction to the resolution,” it added.

"#Russia supports successful conclusion of #ViennaTalks. All the conditions are there already. All parties worked equally hard. But we need to take into account political complexity & sensitivity of issues to be solved in #JCPOA restoration context," it noted.

The UN nuclear agency's Board of Governors has adopted a resolution accusing Iran of not cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The resolution, proposed by the US and its allies, was approved with 30 votes in favor, two against, and three abstentions.

The trigger for the latest Western move was a report issued by the IAEA after its director general Rafael Grossi made a controversial visit to Israel and met the regime's leaders late last month. The agency has been on the receiving end of documents supplied by Israel about Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran has rejected as fake and fabricated by MKO terrorists.

In the new report, the IAEA said it still had questions about traces of enriched uranium previously found at three sites, which Iran had answered before.

Grossi, repeating false allegations against Iran, once again in its latest report said, “This issue is very straightforward…We found [in inspections after 2018] traces of uranium in places that were never declared [as nuclear-related sites]…We are asking questions.”

“Frankly, the information gap is bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said. “Unfortunately, since my previous report, despite the Agency’s stated readiness to engage with Iran without delay to resolve these issues, Iran has not engaged with the Agency.”

The IAEA chief further called on Iran to provide technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at the three locations in the country, claiming that because Tehran has not yet done so, the agency is not in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.

The spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi rejected a recent report by the IAEA director general about three undeclared sites and said that monitoring of the sites will resume when the sanctions are lifted and all the parties to the JCPOA abide by their obligations under the deal.

Kamalvandi also dismissed Rafael Grossi's alleged gap in IAEA knowledge of nuclear activities after Iran reduced cooperation with the agency following adopting a western-backed resolution in June as "lacking a legal basis."

Iran and the IAEA have been locked in a dispute triggered by the agency’s Israeli-influenced accusations, which were leveled against Tehran’s peaceful nuclear activities just as the Islamic Republic and other parties to the Iran deal appeared close to an agreement on reviving the nuclear deal.

Iran asserts that any agreement hinges on the settlement of the Safeguards issues between Tehran and the IAEA and that without settling those issues, reviving the 2015 accord makes no sense.