TEHRAN -- Iran condemned as “not fair” Tuesday a report by the UN nuclear agency on alleged traces of nuclear material found at three undeclared sites.
The comments came with talks deadlocked since March on reviving a 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers.
“Unfortunately, this report does not reflect the reality of the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters, referring to the Monday report by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“It’s not a fair and balanced report,” he said, adding: “We expect this path to be corrected.”
In the report, the agency claimed that it still had questions which were “not clarified” regarding nuclear material previously found at three sites -- Marivan, Varamin and Turquzabad.
It said its long-running efforts to get Iranian officials to explain the alleged presence of nuclear material had failed to provide answers to its questions.
Iran and the IAEA agreed in March on an approach for resolving the issue of the sites, one of the remaining obstacles to reviving the 2015 deal. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is due to “report his conclusions” to the agency’s board of governors at a meeting scheduled for next week.
Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 deal gave Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear energy program.
Then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the pact in 2018 and reimposed biting sanctions, prompting Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.
Most of the activities discussed in the IAEA report are reportedly thought to date back to the early 2000s, which Tehran has already responded to.
Iran saw an Israeli hand in the IAEA’s latest findings.