Europe turned into plaything for Trump, Bolton: Iran's security chief

Iran’s top security official says Europe turned itself into a plaything for US President Donald Trump and his former hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton by presenting an anti-Iranian resolution that was recently adopted by the UN nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors.

According to Press TV, in a tweet on Tuesday, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani slammed the UK, France and Germany — the European parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — for drawing up the resolution, which was passed on Friday by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The resolution called on Iran to allow access to two sites that Israel-sourced reports claim are related to Tehran’s nuclear program. Tehran condemned the resolution, which was likewise strongly rebuffed by China and Russia, two other parties to the nuclear accord.

Shamkhani said by drafting the resolution, the European countries actually played into Trump and Bolton’s hands.

 The duo, who have reciprocally called each other “idiots,” had already proven their anti-Iranian zeal by bringing about the United States’ departure from a historic nuclear accord.

“In his book, #Bolton called #Trump a “stupid & idiot,” and Trump called him an ‘Inadequate stupid,’” Shamkhani wrote.

“Why did Europe ignore the common outcome of two incompetent idiots in leaving #JCPOA and played into their ground by presenting an anti-Iranian resolution?” he asked, referring to the nuclear agreement by the acronym of its official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The JCPOA was inked between Iran and the P5+1 group of states — the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany — in 2015. Washington, however, quit it in 2018, although the UN Security Council has endorsed the deal as a resolution.

Iranian MPs to vote on cooperation with IAEA

Separately, a top committee of Majlis (Iran’s parliament) said it was to submit a motion to the legislature in reaction to the adoption of the resolution. The motion mandates that the government stop implementing the IAEA’s Additional Protocol.

Iran has voluntary adopted the protocol that has been allowing the Agency’s inspectors to carry out more intrusive inspections of the country’s nuclear sites.

In a statement, Majlis’ Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy announced its plan to submit the motion to the parliament, saying the resolution lacked legal and technical justification and calling it politically-motivated and unprofessional.

The Board of Governors committed an “egregious mistake” by adopting the resolution under “political pressure” from the United States and its allies, it noted.

The move came while among the IAEA’s member states, Iran has had the highest level of cooperation with the Agency over the past years by receiving the highest number of inspections and the most transparent of them, the Committee said.

The statement noted that the IAEA’s own regulations forbid the Agency from requesting inspections based on alleged data provided by intelligence services, especially that of the Israeli regime, which has sourced the “hollow claims.”

ME