Iran FM Urges UN Chief to End Int’l Probe into Secret Nuclear Sites

Iran

August 26th, 6:04am

London, Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat

Iranians walk in a street in the capital city of Tehran, on August 25, 2022. (AFP)

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian held telephone talks with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday over international inspections of its nuclear sites. The FM reportedly urged Guterres to drop inspections of uranium traces at undeclared nuclear sites. He said meeting the demand was “crucial” to reaching an agreement in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear deal. A foreign ministry statement said Amirabdollahian informed the UN chief that Iran was studying the American response to Iran’s suggestions over the pact. For his part, Guterres said the negotiations were “positive”, hoping that they would lead to a “satisfactory” end, the statement added. On Wednesday, Iran’s nuclear chief said Tehran will not allow inspections beyond what is in a 2015 nuclear deal. “We are committed to inspections in the framework of the nuclear deal that are linked to nuclear restrictions which we have accepted in the past... Not one word more, not one word less,” said Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, according to a video carried by state media. A senior US official told Reuters on Monday that Iran has dropped some of its main demands on resurrecting the deal to rein in Tehran's nuclear program, including its insistence that international inspectors close some probes of its atomic program, bringing the possibility of an agreement closer. But Eslami appeared to contradict that, saying the probes should be closed “before the implementation day” if the 2015 nuclear deal is revived, the state news agency IRNA reported. Iran has insisted the nuclear pact can only be salvaged if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drops its claims about Tehran's nuclear work. Washington and other Western powers view Tehran's demand as outside the scope of reviving the deal. In June, the UN nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors overwhelmingly passed a resolution, drafted by the United States, France, Britain and Germany, which criticized Iran for failing to explain uranium traces found at three undeclared sites. On Wednesday, Eslami repeated Iran's assertion that claims of unexplained uranium traces were perpetrated by exiled Iranian dissidents and Iran's arch-enemy Israel, IRNA reported. In response to the resolution, Iran expanded further its underground uranium enrichment by installing cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges and also by removing essentially all the IAEA's monitoring equipment installed under the 2015 deal.

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