June 17, 2022
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has overwhelmingly supported a resolution complaining that Iran is still failing to answer the agency’s queries about its nuclear operations.
The Islamic Republic responded with anger and fury, accusing the major Western powers of anti-Iran bias and of pursuing a policy of trying to impoverish Iran.
Many analysts were taken by surprise by Iran’s very harsh and unending response, saying they thought Tehran had overplayed its hand and would lose standing in the world by its confrontational policies.
one of the IAEA’s cameras of the type Iran has now removed from some of its
nuclear sites.
Iran immediate concrete action was to announce it was removing 27 IAEA cameras from nuclear sites. Since February 2021, it has refused to give the IAEA access to the tapes from all the IAEA cameras, but the IAEA could get those tapes once the talks on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) were successfully completed. But now, with the cameras being removed, there will no longer be any video.
IAEA officials said this would mean the agency will no longer be able to track where Iran’s enriched uranium is being moved. Without such “chain of custody” records, it said it will no longer be able to verify that Iran has not diverted any enriched uranium from its oversight.
Director General Rafael Grossi said the impasse would have to be solved within three to four weeks or the IAEA would forever lose the ability to verify that Iran has not spirited away some enriched uranium. He said 40 IAEA cameras would remain, but that the 27 removed were basically all that had been installed to help the IAEA review compliance with the JCPOA. And, he added, “I think this [camera removal] would be a fatal blow [to reviving the JCPOA].”
The vote in the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors was 30-to-2 with three abstentions. Russia and China were the only no votes, suggesting how Iran is being pushed into dependence on those two regimes. The three abstentions were by India, Pakistan and Libya. India, Pakistan and Israel are the only three countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and don’t want the IAEA ever looking into their nuclear programs like it looks at Iran’s.
In Tehran, officials and clerics were lining up at the microphones to accuse the IAEA and the West of perfidy and dishonesty and for approving an “anti-Iran” resolution.
Defiance was the uniform reaction.
The irony was that the “anti-Iran resolution was actually exceedingly mild. In no way did it condemn Iran or threaten Iran. It simply asked it to comply with its own promises to answer the IAEA’s questions fully.
The resolution, whose full test appears on page 13 of this issue, rather simply “stress[ed] the importance of Iran’s compliance with its safeguards obligations and the need for Iran to cooperate fully and in a timely manner with the Agency,” “express[ed] profound concern [at] … insufficient substantive cooperation by Iran” and “call[ed] upon Iran to act on an urgent basis to fulfill its legal obligations.”
IAEA officials said Iran’s response to the agency was simply not credible. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) later released the text of its May 30 report to the IAEA. At issue is the presence of enriched uranium particles at three sites in Iran that Iran has never declared to the IAEA to be sites where it does nuclear work. At three points in the May report, Iran complained that the IAEA has failed to consider the possibility that the enriched uranium particles were not present because of anything Iran did, but because of “sabotage.”
Very pointedly, the IAEA resolution did not call on the UN Security Council to take up the issue. That was a huge concession to Iran, giving it great leeway to respond.
But all the Islamic Republic saw was “anti-Iran” actions by the IAEA.
It acted as the aggrieved party, saying the world did not recognize all that Iran had done to answer the IAEA’s questions—when the whole point of the resolution was to say that Iran had not done much.
At Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said the point of the resolution was to force Iran to make concessions at the JCPOA talks in Vienna, although the questions the IAEA wants answered have nothing to do with the JCPOA.
Ayatollah Khatami said Iran had acted in good faith by providing accurate technical information. He said that had already been confirmed in a joint statement that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and Iran had signed in March. But that statement confirmed no such thing. In fact, it laid out how Iran would reply to outstanding questions so that Grossi could report on Iran’s compliance at the June meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors. Grossi did report, saying Iran had not given complete answers. Specifically, he said that Iran had “not provided explanations that are technically credible.” The Board of Governors then passed its resolution asking Iran to comply.
Ayatollah Khatami, like a number of others, also asserted that the IAEA had declared all outstanding questions to be closed as of December 15, 2015. That was true. But the questions the IAEA wants answered have arisen since 2015. The IAEA’s questions involve three sites that Iran has never declared to be nuclear sites but where the IAEA recently found traces of enriched uranium.
Iran says this is all an Israeli plot because the sites are mentioned in the thousands of pages of Iranian nuclear documents that Israel stole from a Tehran warehouse a few years ago. But the IAEA isn’t even using the documents as its concern; rather it is using the fact that it found enriched uranium at those sites.
Among the heated rhetoric emanating from Tehran, Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, even charged that the IAEA had been “captured” by Israel. And Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh saw proof of that in the fact that Grossi visited Israel in May. Khatibzadeh said, “The abrupt change in the IAEA chief’s tone, his manner of negotiations and his discourse when he addressed the European Parliament [earlier in May before he went to Israel] clearly show that he was acting on the orders of an outside player.”
In the Majlis, 260 of the 290 deputies signed a statement saying the resolution calling for complete answers was an “excessive demand.” The statement said Grossi and his staff “have clearly lost their technical credibility,” although the 30-2-3 vote of the Board of Governors would suggest the exact opposite.
President Raisi also cited Israel in his response to the resolution. “We basically believe this move is intrigued by the Zionists and we both told the agency—and I myself, too—announced that such moves [as the resolution] can by no means urge the Islamic Republic to retreat.” The resolution, however, didn’t ask Iran to retreat but to fully answer questions it had earlier pledged to fully answer.
When the traces of enriched uranium were discovered, many analysts suspected Iran might have used the sites to store old equipment and that there was no real compliance issue involved. But Iran’s foot-dragging for three years has convinced most analysts that there is a real issue involving all three sites and that the sites are locations where Iran carried out nuclear work it does not want the IAEA to know about—and that means work on weapons.
The 30 members of the Board of Governors that voted for the resolution criticizing Iran were Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, Colombia, Czechia, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.
The Islamic Republic may have been surprised at the votes of Malaysia, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam, which have often supported it in the past.