(Tehran) Iran has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of discriminatory treatment, days after receiving its director general in Tehran and before Iranian nuclear talks resumed in Vienna on Monday.
” It’s a reality. The IAEA does not treat Iran as it should and we have reminded it on several occasions, ”Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesperson for the Iranian Energy Organization, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Iranian Energy Organization, said Thursday evening. atomic (OIEA).
According to him, if Iran is the victim of such treatment, it is “first of all because international organizations are under the influence of powerful countries. The latter finance them and in exchange put pressure on them ”.
“We are trying to assert our rights and counter the negative image that (Westerners) are trying to create against us,” Mr. Kamalvandi again denounced, adding that “the nuclear industry” was “essential” for the country and that we should “above all not give up, but on the contrary continue our efforts”.
For his part, after his visit to Tehran and on the first day of an IAEA Board of Governors in the Austrian capital on Thursday, Director Rafael Grossi had referred to “constructive” discussions, but which did not lead to an agreement. .
The Vienna Iranian nuclear pact, concluded in 2015 between Iran on the one hand and the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, France and Germany on the other, offered Tehran the lifting of part of the international sanctions strangling its economy in exchange for a drastic reduction of its nuclear program, placed under strict UN control.
But the United States unilaterally left the agreement in 2018 under the presidency of Donald Trump, and reinstated its sanctions against Tehran, accused of seeking to acquire atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear program. In return, Iran, which denies having such intentions, has gradually abandoned its commitments.
Friday, a few days before the resumption of negotiations in Vienna, the head of Iranian diplomacy Hossein Amir-Abdollahian assured, in a telephone interview with his European counterpart Josep Borrel, that if “the other parties were ready to return to their full strength obligations and lifting the sanctions, it would be possible to reach a favorable and even immediate agreement ”.
In any case, he added, “we will participate in the Vienna talks in good faith and in earnest”.
Mr. Amir-Abdollahian also called again for “a serious and sufficient guarantee” that the United States will not leave the agreement.
Mr. Borrel, quoted in the Iranian foreign affairs press release, assured him that “the only way to lift the sanctions is to relaunch the nuclear deal, through which Iran and the international community can be assured of nature. peaceful Iranian nuclear program ”.