Envoy: Iran Committed to Safeguards Agreement Alone
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s ambassador to the Vienna-based international organizations dismissed the UN nuclear agency’s push to force Tehran to extend a temporary technical agreement with the IAEA, stressing that Iran is only bound to honor the Safeguards Agreement, no less, but no more.
In comments at a televised interview on Saturday, Kazim Gharibabadi responded to an earlier report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Secretary-General Rafael Grossi.
Grossi had reported to members of the IAEA’s Board of Governors that Iran had been unresponsive to the agency’s demand from it to keep the data recorded by its cameras at some of the country’s nuclear sites.
In February, Iran stopped providing the data to the IAEA, acting on a parliamentary law that has obliged the country to retaliate to the United States and its Western allies’ non-commitment to a 2015 nuclear agreement. It, however, reached an understanding with the IAEA to retain the footage and trust it with the agency only after the Western allies resumed their cooperation with the nuclear deal.
Gharibabadi reminded that Iran had been retaining the data from the cameras “solely based on good will, and not as part of its obligations towards the agency.”
The Islamic Republic took the decision to keep the data only out of “political considerations” and in line with its commitment to international safeguards, he said. “Iran is not bound by any commitment to implement the agency’s demand,” the envoy noted, Press TV reported.
In that sense, “the agency had no duty to report on the expired (understanding) agreement” to the Board of Governors, Gharibabadi said.
No earlier than on Friday, the Iranian diplomat had similarly laid into the UN agency for making excessive demands on the Islamic Republic.
“Such remarks are pregnant with political messages,” the envoy said, referring to Grossi’s report.
He was repeating the Islamic Republic’s grievance about the agency’s submitting to the anti-Iran political pressure that is applied to it by the US and others.
“We have said this repeatedly that there would be no agreement until our demands were met,” Gharibabadi concluded, reiterating the country’s assertion that Tehran’s cooperation was conditioned on Washington and others’ resumption of their duties towards the nuclear accord.
The US left the deal that is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 and resumed its inhumane sanctions against the Iranian nation. Iran remained committed to the JCPOA for a year after the US’s betrayal, but started a number of nuclear countermeasures on the anniversary of Washington’s illegal and unilateral measures targeting the deal and Tehran.
