Iran says IAEA’s “information gap” claim has no legal basis
The International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi’s claim on Monday that the information gap with regard to Iran’s nuclear program is getting “bigger and bigger” does not have any legal basis, Iran’s official news agency IRNA quoted Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying. What the IAEA is not allowed to conduct today in terms of inspecting Iran’s…
TEHRAN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) — The “information gap” claimed by the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog with regard to Tehran’s nuclear program fails to have any legal basis, a spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said on Tuesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi’s claim on Monday that the information gap with regard to Iran’s nuclear program is getting “bigger and bigger” does not have any legal basis, Iran’s official news agency IRNA quoted Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying.
What the IAEA is not allowed to conduct today in terms of inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites pertains to a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States, plus Germany), and was defined within the framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the AEOI spokesman said, adding the reactivation of the mechanism hinges primarily on the removal of the sanctions and the signatories’ fulfillment of their commitments.
He added Iran has fully cooperated with the IAEA with respect to the three allegedly “undeclared sites” where the agency claims to have detected nuclear particles.
Iran has provided the agency with the information it needed with regard to the three “alleged sites” and answered all its questions, Kamalvandi said, adding Tehran has even held meetings to further resolve ambiguity.
The AEOI spokesman called on the IAEA to refrain from judging and commenting about Iran’s nuclear program based on the “politically motivated” documents with which Israel has provided.
At a press conference in Vienna on Monday, also the first day of an IAEA Board of Governors’ quarterly meeting, Grossi said the agency found in its inspections traces of uranium in places that were never declared by Iran.
The IAEA chief pointed out that reviving the JCPOA, by boosting agency access, “could facilitate us getting to broader conclusions” over Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran signed the JCPOA with world powers in July 2015, agreeing to curb its nuclear program in return for removing sanctions on the country. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran, prompting the latter to drop some of its commitments under the pact.
The talks on the JCPOA’s revival began in April 2021 in Vienna. The issue of the unexplained uranium particles appears to be a sticking point between Iran and Western powers in the nuclear talks. Enditem
