(Washington) The United States warned Thursday that the latest “provocations” of Tehran in the atomic file risked leading to “an aggravated nuclear crisis” and “increased economic and political isolation of Iran”.
Posted at 11:35 a.m.
Updated at 11:49 a.m.
“We continue to urge Iran to choose the path of diplomacy and de-escalation instead,” US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said in a statement.
He was reacting to Iran’s decision to withdraw 27 surveillance cameras from its nuclear activities, in response to the vote on a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) formally calling it to order for its lack of cooperation.
“Unfortunately, Iran’s initial response” to this text “was not to address the lack of cooperation and transparency […] but on the contrary to threaten new provocations and reductions in transparency”, lamented Antony Blinken.
“Such measures would be counterproductive and further complicate our efforts” to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, he warned. “The only possible outcome of such an attitude will be an aggravated nuclear crisis and increased economic and political isolation of Iran. »
The resolution voted on Wednesday by the Board of Governors of the IAEA, presented by the United States and the Europeans, concerns the showdown between the Islamic Republic and the UN agency: the latter accuses Iran of failing to address concerns about traces of enriched uranium found at three sites that Tehran had not declared as having hosted nuclear activities.
These tensions further weigh down the chances of success of the negotiations underway for more than a year to resuscitate the 2015 agreement supposed to prevent Iran from manufacturing the atomic bomb.
This pact, known by its English acronym JCPOA, has been moribund since the United States left it in 2018 under President Donald Trump and reimposed sanctions on Tehran, which in return withdrew from key restrictions on its program. nuclear.
Current US President Joe Biden says he wants to back out of the deal, but talks have stalled, notably over Iran’s demand that its ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, be removed from the blacklist American terrorist organizations.
“The United States still wants to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA,” assured Antony Blinken on Thursday, stressing that a draft agreement had been “on the table since March”. “But we can only conclude the negotiations and implement it if Iran gives up its additional demands that have nothing to do with the JCPOA,” he warned, in a thinly veiled allusion to fate. Revolutionary Guards.