Iran on Thursday dealt a heavy blow to hopes of resuming the 2015 nuclear deal after beginning the removal of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) monitoring equipment, said the organization’s director general, the Argentine. Rafael Grossi.
The country warned it would retaliate after the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution criticizing Tehran for continually failing to explain traces of uranium found at three undeclared sites.
The document was prepared by the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Germany and approved on Wednesday night (8). This is the first letter of its kind since June 2020, signed by 30 of the IAEA’s 35 members, with only Russia and China voting against — India, Libya and Pakistan abstained.
The Iranian government reacted. In a statement, the foreign ministry called the resolution “a political action, not constructive and incorrect”. “The adoption of the resolution, based on the hasty and unbalanced report of the IAEA Director General and on information fabricated by the Zionist regime [Israel]will only weaken the process of cooperation and interaction between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the agency,” the statement said.
The government then said it would remove monitoring equipment, including 27 IAEA cameras, as early as Thursday, which is “basically all” equipment installed under the 2015 agreement, Grossi told reporters in Vienna. “That [a remoção] it would be a fatal blow [para retomar o acordo]”, he said.
If the blockade to monitoring persists, “in three or four weeks” the IAEA will no longer be able to obtain the information needed to monitor the nuclear program, according to the agency.
There are still another 40 cameras of the agency that were already operating in monitoring before 2015 that will continue to work, said the director. According to him, the body, in charge of verifying the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program, will still be able to continue inspections and has other instruments at its disposal, but Tehran’s response represents “less transparency and more doubts”.
“Does this mean we are nearing the end of the race? I hope not,” he added, urging Iran to resume dialogue once “emotions calm down a bit.”
The 2015 nuclear deal called for limiting the country’s nuclear activities in exchange for a reduction in international sanctions against the Persian country, but has been stalled since former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the pact in 2018 and reinstated sanctions. A year after the new punitive measures, Iran began to renege on the commitments made in the pact.
Negotiations to reactivate the nuclear agreement began in April 2021, after Joe Biden took over the American presidency, but have been stalled since March this year. Western powers say the country is getting closer and closer to building a nuclear bomb, which Iran denies it is aiming for.
The United States called the camera shutdown “provocations”. The head of US diplomacy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the country’s actions could provoke “an aggravated nuclear crisis” and “greater economic and political isolation of Iran”. In addition to deactivating the cameras, Iran informed the IAEA of the installation of “advanced centrifuges” at the Natanz plant, in the center of the country, with which it would significantly increase its uranium enrichment capacity.
So far, Iran has been careful to avoid clashes with the nuclear agency, but this time, ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi has raised his tone. “Do you think we would back down from our positions because you passed a resolution in the Board of Governors? In the name of God and the great nation of Iran, we will not back down a single step from our positions,” he said in a speech.
For the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Saeed Khatibzadeh, “whoever starts is responsible for the consequences”. “Iran’s response is firm and proportionate,” he wrote on Twitter.
