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Thursday, August 25, 2022
Iran urges IAEA to end undeclared nuclear sites issue
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Iran’s top diplomat demands that the UN nuclear watchdog drop the issue of three undeclared sites, as momentum builds to revive a 2015 nuclear deal.
Washington has said the United States remains adamant that Iran cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to clear up suspicions about earlier work at three undeclared sites.
In June, the IAEA’s board of governors adopted a resolution censuring Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three sites that Tehran had not declared as having hosted nuclear activities.
“We are very serious about safeguard issues, and do not want to allow some of the IAEA’s baseless accusations to remain,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says, according to state news agency IRNA.
The issue has poisoned relations between the IAEA and the Islamic Republic, which considers the matter “political in nature, and which should not be used as a pretext to punish Iran,” an Iranian diplomat says, quoted by IRNA.
The comments come a day after the United States responded to Iran’s proposals on reviving the landmark agreement trashed by former US president Donald Trump.
“We are in the process of examining the response of the Americans,” Amir-Abdollahian says.
The Times of Israel Community.