Official Rejects IAEA’s Account of Camera Memory at Iran’s Nuclear Site

On Friday, Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, displayed the camera system similar to those used in an Iranian centrifuge-parts workshop at Karaj at a press conference in Vienna, Austria.

He claimed that critical footage from a surveillance camera at the facility had gone missing, though acknowledging that the camera -- one of the four IAEA cameras placed at the facility -- "had been destroyed" in a sabotage attack in June.

Iran removed the cameras, along with the destroyed one, and showed them to the nuclear watchdog inspectors.

However, Grossi on Friday asked for the so-called missing memory card of the destroyed camera.

Later on Friday, Noor News quoted an informed AEOI official as explaining that the camera’s data storage device was also destroyed in attack.

“The camera’s data storage device, wanted by the IAEA chief, has been destroyed in a sabotage operation,” the unnamed official said, adding, “The IAEA must answer why it does not use its capabilities to prevent such sabotage attacks with known origins?”

“The IAEA, in addition to its supervisory duties, has safeguarding responsibilities toward its members, and in this case, it should be held accountable for not preventing the threat against Iran's nuclear sites and not taking effective action in this regard,” the Iranian official added, Press TV reported.

The development came after the IAEA and Iran agreed to reinstall surveillance cameras inside the centrifuge component manufacturing workshop at the Karaj site.

Iran and the five remaining parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) resumed talks in Vienna on November 29 after a five-month pause, marking the first round of negotiations under Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration and the seventh overall.