VIENNA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should avoid supporting the political agenda of certain parties.
“The Agency should not act in a way that it would be directly or indirectly supporting the political agenda of certain parties against others,” Kazem Gharibabadi told the IAEA Board of Governors Thursday.
“This method of biased treatment of member states not only harms the nonproliferation regime, but also reduces trust in the Agency’s professional activities and lowers cooperation between the Agency and its member states.”
Gharibabadi also urged the IAEA to take a transparent stance on the Zionist regime’s “unacceptable” failure to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its continued refusal to place its nuclear activities and facilities under the comprehensive safeguards agreements.
The ambassador described the IAEA’s negligence toward Israel’s nuclear weapons program as a “bitter historical joke”.
“Regrettably, this regime ignores the international community by downplaying the importance of the [NPT], refusing to accept it, and ... placing all of its nuclear facilities and activities under the Agency’s comprehensive safeguards regime,” Gharibabadi said.
Such a behavior, he said, has emboldened Israel to deride the IAEA’s mandate and mission to prevent the diversion of the occupying regime’s nuclear materials and activities and criticize some members of the NPT.
“The Agency’s silence in this regard, along with its deafening silence over the assassination of [Iran’s] nuclear scientists and the acts of terror and sabotage at Iran’s nuclear facilities, calls into question the Agency’s credibility and impartiality and arouses suspicion that it is a political organization rather than a professional one,” Gharibabadi said.
The Islamic Republic strongly warns against any adventurism by the Zionist regime, he said.
Iran will not only give a decisive response should such criminal actions, including the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientist, reoccur but it will also reconsider its transparency-building measures and its cooperation with the IAEA, he said.
Gharibabadi noted that all nuclear materials in Iran are under the IAEA’s safeguards as per the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and there has never been seen any sign of diversion in Iran’s nuclear materials or declared activities.
The ambassador sharply criticized the latest report on Iran’s nuclear program by IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, saying while Tehran has been engaged in practical and constructive
interactions with the Agency, its secretariat has taken an unconstructive approach to Iran at the cost of harming its own credibility.
The Agency’s latest report, he said, is a repetition of its previous one without any mention of the latest progress made by the two sides.
This report, Gharibabadi noted, proves the IAEA secretariat’s one-sided approach to Iran, which ignores the level of cooperation and interaction between the two sides.
Iran’s ambassador noted that the continuation of such an approach to Iran’s nuclear activities by the Agency can turn into an obstacle to future goodwill interactions between the two sides.
Addressing the meeting, Russia’s permanent ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said discovered traces of nuclear material in Iran are of historical nature and pose not proliferation risks.
“For other states, similar issues are addressed bilaterally and may take time. In the case of Iran, the politicization of the issue is detrimental,” Ulyanov said, calling on the IAEA to return to routine cooperation with Iran because “political speculation and external pressure lead nowhere.”
He also called for efforts to find a way to exclude proliferation risks and solve the remaining issues before resulting in yet another crisis.
The Russian envoy also criticized the recurring leakage of IAEA director general reports from “what should be a confidential portal,” saying it would only make it harder to work in a calm manner to address outstanding issues with Iran.