AEOI chief: IAEA refrains from fulfilling its duties toward Iran

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has failed to fulfill its duties toward Iran and has withheld the country the technical assistance that it is bound by its statute to provide for member states.

Mohammad Eslami made the remarks in a Monday meeting with a senior cleric in the central city of Isfahan, saying, “We are faced with the devil and arrogance in the world,” Fars news agency reported.

Iran’s nuclear chief added, “The statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency has stipulated that one of the main duties of the Agency is to assist all countries and facilitate their peaceful use of the nuclear industry.”

“However, such issues are totally reverse when it comes to our country and this Agency does not help us,” Eslami added.

Iran’s nuclear chief noted that the AEOI intends to put a cap on the hue and cry that surrounds Iran’s nuclear program and replace it with calm, progress and development, so that “our people and country would see its results as such advances help promote our national power.”

Eslami’s remarks came after Director General of the IAEA Rafael Mariano Grossi addressed a meeting of the Agency’s Board of Governors earlier the same day, claiming that since February 22, 2021, when Iran decided to stop voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and curtail the IAEA’s snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, the Agency’s activities in the country “have been seriously undermined.”

The IAEA chief added that “Iran’s failure to respond to the Agency’s requests for access to its monitoring equipment was seriously compromising the Agency’s technical capability to maintain continuity of knowledge, which is necessary for the Agency to resume its verification and monitoring of Iran’s nuclear-related commitments in the future.”

Grossi asked Iran to fulfill its obligations “under the Subsidiary Arrangements to its Safeguards Agreement.”

Tehran has said time and again that its obligations are only relevant under the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if other signatories do their share and lift anti-Iran sanctions.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Grossi expressed hope that “through a direct, cooperative and productive dialogue with the new Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran these urgent matters can be addressed.”

ME