UN nuclear watchdog plans rebuke of Iran over access to sites – report

The United Nations atomic watchdog is preparing to rap Iran for stonewalling for preventing access to nuclear sites that inspectors want to visit under the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal, the Reuters news agency reported Monday.

The admonition is an indication of a hardened stance toward Iran by the new director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi of Argentina, diplomats say.

Alongside an expected quarterly update on Iran’s adherence to the deal, the IAEA will also issue a separate document scolding Tehran for not providing access to one or more sites of interest, Reuters said, citing diplomats familiar with the development.

The rebuke will highlight a general lack of cooperation and failure to grant access to the sites, the diplomats said.

“The general message is: There’s a new sheriff in town,” said one diplomat representing a country on the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, referring to Grossi, who took over in October.

The nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, provided sanctions relief for Iran in return for it dismantling the weapons-capable aspects of its nuclear program. The unraveling agreement hangs on the thread of international inspection of Iran’s atomic sites.

Whereas previous IAEA chief Yuikya Amano of Japan had only pressured Iran over access to sites, but avoided any confrontation, Grossi is more stern, diplomats told Reuters.

According to the report, the IAEA under Amano was at first reluctant to demand access to a site in Tehran that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in his 2018 speech to the UN General Assembly, and described as a “secret atomic warehouse.”

When the IAEA eventually inspected the site in February, it found traces of uranium. Iran, which claims the compound is a carpet-cleaning facility, has not provided a full explanation for the findings.

The site in Turquzabad, Tehran, was one of several mentioned in a mass of documents that Israel spirited away from Iran. In April 2018, Netanyahu presented what he said where 100,000 documents on 55,000 pages on 183 CDs, which the Mossad had removed from an unmarked Tehran warehouse and which proved that the Islamic Republic had actively worked on building a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA, which is scheduled to release its next update on the 2015 nuclear deal on Tuesday, declined to comment to Reuters about the reported upcoming additional rebuke.

On Monday Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran might reconsider providing UN inspectors with access to Iran’s nuclear facilities if the country were confronted with “a new situation,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

Rouhani’s remarks came during a meeting with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s new foreign affairs chief, who was on his first visit to Iran since taking office.

The visit is seen as the latest move by the EU to save Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

“The trend of inspections that has been carried out until today will continue, unless we face a new situation,” Rouhani was quoted by IRNA as saying. He did not elaborate.

Tensions between Iran and the United States have steadily risen since US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the JCPOA nuclear agreement and re-imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018. Tehran has responded by gradually rolling back its commitments to the deal in hopes of pressuring Europe into finding a way for Tehran to sell its crude oil abroad despite the American sanctions. Pundits have warned Iran’s recent steps reduce the time it needs to begin producing fissile material for a weapon.

The US says the deal didn’t go far enough in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons or address the country’s missile development program. Iran has said it will only negotiate if Washington first removes its current sanctions.

In January, in the wake of the US killing top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike, Iran announced it would no longer respect limits set on how many centrifuges it can use to enrich uranium.

In response, Britain, France and Germany triggered the accord’s dispute mechanism to force Iran into discussions, starting the clock on a process that could result in the “snapback” of UN and EU sanctions on Iran.