Iran hyperlinks future IAEA cooperation to impartiality, after lethal June battle with Israel and US.
Iran’s president has warned the Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA) to desert its “double requirements” if it hopes to revive cooperation over the nation’s nuclear programme, amid an acute distrust following Israel and the US’ assaults on Iranian nuclear websites final month, and the UN nuclear watchdog’s refusal to sentence the strikes.
Talking to European Council President Antonio Costa by telephone on Thursday, President Masoud Pezeshkian stated, “The continuation of Iran’s cooperation with the company is determined by the latter correcting its double requirements concerning the nuclear file,” in response to Iranian state media.
Pezeshkian additionally declared that “any repeated aggression towards Iran will likely be met with a extra decisive and regrettable response.”
Relations between Tehran and the IAEA have sharply deteriorated since mid-June, when Israel launched air assaults on Iran, hitting army and nuclear websites in addition to quite a few civilian areas. The assaults had been then adopted by US air raids utilizing bunker-buster bombs. Iran retaliated by launching missiles and drones at Israel, triggering a 12-day battle.
An Iranian missile assault on a US base in Qatar was the ultimate act earlier than a fragile ceasefire was declared by US President Donald Trump.
Final week, Pezeshkian signed a regulation suspending Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA.
The company confirmed that its final remaining inspectors had now left the nation, returning to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna. The company stated its employees had remained in Tehran all through the battle, and reiterated its intention to renew its monitoring work “as quickly as doable”.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi described talks with Iran as a “prime precedence”, however admitted that his company had not had entry to Iranian amenities for the reason that assaults. Tehran has accused the IAEA of enabling the strikes by issuing a decision on June 12 – simply someday earlier than the bombing – accusing Iran of breaching its nuclear obligations.
Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceable functions and denies searching for nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, it has made clear that it not trusts the company to behave impartially.
Regardless of remaining a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Iran insists that the IAEA did not condemn the assaults by the US and Israel and as an alternative selected to align with Western stress.
US State Division spokesperson Tammy Bruce condemned Tehran’s determination to droop IAEA cooperation, calling it “unacceptable” and urging Iran to “reverse course and select a path of peace and prosperity”.
“Iran can’t and won’t have a nuclear weapon,” she stated.
Neither US intelligence nor Grossi ascertained that Iran was constructing a nuclear bomb.
Leaders of the BRICS bloc on Sunday sharply rebuked the US and Israeli bombardments of Iran in June, calling them a “blatant breach of worldwide regulation”.
