TEHRAN -- Iran’s nuclear chief has slammed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for politicizing the country’s peaceful nuclear program under the occupying regime of Israel’s pressure regardless of Tehran’s extensive cooperation with the UN nuclear agency.
Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Muhammad Eslami made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Iran Press in response to a question about a resolution, proposed by the U.S. and its European allies, which was recently passed during a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors accusing Tehran of failing to fully cooperate with the agency.
He said Iran did not expect at all that such a resolution would be passed under the influence and political pressure of the Zionist regime.
The Iranian nuclear chief expressed hope that the UN nuclear agency would be released from the “captivity of the Zionists” so that the international prestige of the IAEA and its director general would not be undermined further more.
In yet another blow to the bleak prospects of reviving the JCPOA, the U.S., France, Britain, and Germany spearheaded a resolution at the IAEA board a week ago.
Iran has denounced the resolution and blamed the U.S. and its three European allies for the crisis.
The resolution was passed only few days after the IAEA’s chief Rafael Grossi traveled to Occupied Palestine and met the regime’s extremist premier Naftali Bennett.
Iran had previously warned that Grossi’s visit ahead of the meeting of the Board of Governors was in contradiction with the agency’s principles of observing impartiality and maintaining its technical and professional status.
Eslami vehemently rejected the “political” allegations leveled over the past 30 years that Iran was seeking atomic bombs, saying such accusations have been orchestrated by the occupying regime of Israel to impede Iran’s nuclear progress.
Iran has always had full cooperation with the IAEA and allowed it to visit the country’s nuclear sites, the AEOI chief emphasized.
He said Iran provided the IAEA with clarifications regarding its nuclear activities as part of trust-building measures and as a sign of goodwill.
Western and Zionist media outlets’ claims that Iran’s peaceful
nuclear program pursues military objectives and seeks to build nuclear bombs are totally false, he said.
In Iran’s defense and national security doctrine, weapons of mass destruction have no place, Eslami added.
He said Iran cooperates with the IAEA within the framework of the Safeguards Agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
There is no undeclared and covert activity or undeclared sites in Iran, the nuclear chief added.