Iran Doubles Down On Dropping Nuclear Probe
Iran’s nuclear energy chief said Wednesday Tehran expected the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to end its enquiries into unexplained uranium traces.
Iran’s nuclear energy chief said Wednesday Tehran expected the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to end its enquiries into unexplained uranium traces.
Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was reiterating an existing stance, but his comments came after a senior United States official told Reuters Monday that Iran had dropped a demand that the IAEA shelve its investigation as part of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
“We don’t expect the director general of the agency [Raphael Mariano Grossi] to utter sentences that are wanted by the Zionist regime,” Eslami told Fars News. “We have sent our written protest through our permanent representative in the agency [Iran’s ambassador to United Nations organizations based in Vienna]. Whatever has transpired in these negotiations is aimed at ending these claims before carrying out JCPOA commitments.”
With Iran’s 16-month talks with world powers at a delicate stage, Iran has cited a December 2015 precedent when the agency published a ‘final’ report on its pre-2003 nuclear work. Tehran says the agency’s further enquiries into this work, which led to inspectors finding uranium traces, came only after then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 made allegations based on documents he said were removed by Israeli intelligence from Iran.
Grossi – backed by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States – has argued that, regardless what happens over the JCPOA, Iran must satisfy the IAEA over these uranium traces purely as part of its ‘safeguards’ commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Grossi ‘hopeful’ on ‘filling in gaps’
In an interview with NPR Tuesday, Grossi said he was “hopeful” Iran would explain the presence of the uranium. “They know they have to do it, we have agreed on a mechanism,” he said. “My legal obligation is to ask the question.”
Grossi said it was a “political question” as to whether adequate explanations were needed before there could be agreement on reviving the JCPOA. The IAEA chief stressed the need for “maximum levels of access and inspection,” which Iran has restricted since 2020 following the US withdrawal in 2018 from the JCPOA. Under the JCPOA, Iran was required to accept more intrusive inspections, including implementation of the ‘additional protocol.’
“If the IAEA is allowed to do our inspection work, we are going to get there – I’m pretty confident,” Grossi said. The director general noted the IAEA had lost “continuity of knowledge” when Iran in June removed 27 cameras from nuclear manufacturing sites and storage facilities that had been installed after the JCPOA.
“If and when the agreement is revived and we can reconnect the cameras, we’ll have to sit down with our Iranian colleagues and see how we can fill in the gaps,” Grossi said. “If we have the correct access, the inspectors of the IAEA will always be in a position to detect in a timely manner any deviation of nuclear material…”
Associated Press reported Wednesday that the US would later today respond, presumably through the European Union, to an Iranian response made August 15 to EU proposals circulated August 8 to bridge remaining gaps over restoring the JCPOA.
While contents of the EU-mediated exchanges have been confidential, claims and reports have emerged over various stumbling blocks. As well as the IAEA probe, these include Iran’s demand for nuclear and economic ‘guarantees’ should the US again leave the JCPOA.
European Union officials called these ideas a “final text,” and then reacted with cautious optimism to an Iranian response made August 15.
Ned Price, the United States State Department Spokesman, referred Monday to the “latest versions of the text the EU had circulated,” suggesting the text had been amended. Price said the latest versions did not include the removal of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from the US list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations.’ Tehran reportedly demanded earlier in talks the withdrawal of the designation, made by President Donald Trump in 2019 in the context of ‘maximum pressure’ introduced after the US left the nuclear deal in 2018.
As reported Tuesday, a senior US official told Reuters news agency Monday that Iran had now “basically dropped the main hang-ups to a deal.”
Crossing the Rubicon
“We think they have finally crossed the Rubicon and moved forward towards possibly getting back into the deal on terms that President [Joe] Biden can accept,” the official told Reuters. “If we are closer today, it’s because Iran has moved. They conceded on issues they have been holding onto from the beginning.”
The official added that the US was “studying” Iran’s response: “We’ll get back to them soon.”
While accusing Washington of delay since Tehran’s input August 15, Iranian officials have suggested the US has made significant concessions. This may help to placate less strident Iranian opponents of the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said Wednesday that while “most” countries agreed with the EU text, “I still don’t have the answer from the United States.”
The trickiest issue on which to agree wording over the text restoring the JCPOA may be enquiries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into uranium traces found in Iranian sites linked to pre-2003 work. While the agency would monitor a restored 2015 deal, it insists that its enquiry into the uranium relates to Tehran’s basic commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rather than JCPOA.
Iran, on the other hand, has pointed to the precedent of 2015 when, shortly after the JCPOA was signed, the agency published a ‘final’ report on Tehran’s pre-2003 work. Iran argues the probe was revived only because of allegations made by Israel based on documents supposedly removed from Iran by Israeli agents.
‘Main obstacle’
Nour News, linked to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Tuesday objected to “political approaches” by IAEA chief Raphael Mariano Grossi, calling him the “main obstacle to the finalization of the Vienna talks, along with the Zionist regime.”
The quid pro quo of JCPOA restoration boils down to which US sanctions violate the agreement, and how Iran would return to JCPOA limits the nuclear activities it has expanded and refined since 2019. With both sanctions and nuclear work technical as well as political, gaps between Washington and Tehran have not been bridged in 16 months of talks, largely in Vienna between Iran and six world powers, and bilaterally between Iran and the US in Qatar in June.
A second US official quoted by Reuters said that under the American understanding of JCPOA restoration, limits on the Iranian nuclear program would extend to “at least six months” the ‘break out’ time required to assemble a crude weapon should Iran decide to do so.