Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a part of the Iranian negotiating team at Vienna, has claimed that Iran will not sign the nuclear deal with the US until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) closes all files against his country, Fars News Agency reported on Tuesday, June 6.
Marandi made the statement while talking to Al-Mayadeen and also mentioned that the recent decision by the IAEA to stop its investigation into the issue of nuclear particles found at so-called “undeclared sites” in Iran proved that “Western governments were lying from the beginning” about Iran’s nuclear program.
The US and its European allies, the UK, France, and Germany, members of the IAEA Board of Governors, have been pushing for the IAEA investigations since last year, claiming that Iran has a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Iran had claimed that the IAEA investigation is politically motivated and used by the US and its allies to corner it and delay the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal. The deal was signed in 2015 but is in tatters since the withdrawal of the US in May 2018 and its imposition of unilateral sanctions on Iran.
Iran has also alleged Israeli pressure behind the investigations and questioned the neutrality of the current chief of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi. Last year, before the IAEA Board of Governors (BoG) meeting in June, Grossi made a controversial visit to Israel, a country which is not a signatory of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and reportedly possesses illegal nuclear weapons.
Marandi reiterated the Iranian stand on Grossi. He also said that “if the United States closes the case” at the IAEA and “accepts the text that both Iran and Josep Borrell saw as reasonable, then Iran will be willing to sign the deal.” Josep Borrell, EU’s foreign policy head, played a crucial role in finalizing a draft of the agreement at Vienna last year.
Several rounds of negotiations have been held in Vienna and other places between the remaining signatories of the JCPOA to revive the deal. A draft agreement was almost finalized by the Iranians in August last year. However, the US, primarily due to Israeli pressure, refused to agree to the Iranian demand of lifting all sanctions.
Reacting to the IAEA shutting its investigations, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s representative at Vienna, said that the Western states should now return to Vienna and finalize the nuclear deal instead of making non-serious allegations about Iran’s nuclear power.
Israel accuses IAEA of capitulation
After the IAEA decided to shut its investigation into the issue of nuclear particles found at one of the three “undeclared” nuclear sites in Iran, along with some other outstanding issues, on May 31, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the IAEA of capitulating under Iranian pressure.
The sites in question were active more than two decades earlier. Iran claims that it has provided all necessary explanations to the IAEA regarding the case. On May 31, the IAEA acknowledged the Iranian explanation about the nuclear particles found at Marivan in Abadeh county in the southern Fars province and said that “the matter is no longer outstanding.”
The IAEA also acknowledged that Iran has reinstalled some monitoring cameras at its Isfahan nuclear facility, which were removed last year following its BoGs censor in June last year.
Netanyahu, in a televised address, called Iranian explanations a lie and dismissed the IAEA’s reasoning on the issue. He said that “the agency’s capitulation to Iranian pressure is a black stain on its records,” and also threatened military action against Iran.
Rossi, on Monday, refuted Israeli allegations and claimed that the IAEA will never water down its safeguard standards. He denied the Israeli claims of politicization of the agency and its work, saying that “the politicization is in the eye of the beholder.”
