(Tehran) Tehran on Tuesday accused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of having published an neither “fair” nor “balanced” report on undeclared nuclear sites in Iran.
Posted yesterday at 4:49 p.m.
On Monday, the IAEA published a report in which the UN gendarme said he had “unresolved” questions regarding the presence of nuclear material at three undeclared sites in Iran: Marivan, Varamin and Turquzabad, south of Tehran.
The IAEA claims to have unsuccessfully asked Iranian officials to explain the presence of this material on these sites.
“Unfortunately, this report does not reflect the reality of the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Khatibzadeh told reporters.
“It is not a fair and balanced report,” he added. “We expect this trajectory to be corrected. »
“We fear that the pressure exerted by the Zionist regime (Israel, editor’s note) and other actors push the agency to make its technical reports political reports”, he accused.
“Theft of documents”
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused the Islamic Republic on Twitter of having “stolen confidential documents from the IAEA and used this information to systematically evade inspections” from the agency.
He accompanied his message with a link to several documents in Persian presented as confidential and translated into English, as well as photos supposed to support his remarks.
The Jewish state perceives as a threat to its security the nuclear program of Iran, its sworn enemy whom it accuses of wanting to acquire the atomic bomb, which Tehran has always denied.
The Israeli authorities have thus repeatedly declared that they do not rule out the possibility of military action to prevent the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear power.
According to Tehran, its nuclear program has already been the target of several campaigns of cyberattacks, sabotage and targeted assassinations of scientists, which it has blamed on Israel.
Enriched uranium
When releasing the IAEA report on Monday, Iran’s representative to international agencies in Vienna, Mohammad Reza Ghaebi, called on the agency to “be aware of the destructive consequences of publishing this kind of biased report. “.
In April, Tehran said it hoped that the “ambiguity” weighing on undeclared sites would be lifted by June, after sending the UN agency documents on this subject.
In another report also published on Monday, the IAEA assures that stocks of enriched uranium now exceed the limit authorized by the 2015 international agreement by more than 18 times.
Thus, Tehran has 43.1 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, a threshold close to the 90% needed to make a bomb, against 33.2 kg previously, according to the report which will be examined during the Board of Governors of the IAEA next week.
France expressed Tuesday its “very great concern” after the publication of the IAEA report and called on Iran to respond without delay to the questions and needs of the UN agency.
The spokesman for American diplomacy Ned Price also urged Tehran to “cooperate fully” and “without further delay” with the UN agency, in which he reiterated the “confidence” of the United States.
These exchanges between Iran and the IAEA are carried out in parallel with discussions to save the 2015 agreement supposed to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring the atomic bomb in exchange for the lifting of sanctions suffocating its economy.
The deal fell apart after the 2018 unilateral US withdrawal under President Donald Trump and the reinstatement of US sanctions on Iran, which backed away from key limits on its nuclear program.
Launched a year ago, but suspended several times, the negotiations to resurrect this pact are at a new impasse.
Despite the findings of the IAEA, the US government of President Joe Biden still claims to want to revive the 2015 agreement. Ned Price said that this remained at this stage in the “interests” of Washington, ready to return to it “immediately if Tehran “drops its demands that are not related” to this agreement.