VIENNA (Dispatches) - The United States, Britain, Germany and France have submitted to the UN nuclear agency’s board a draft resolution criticizing Iran for allegedly not fully answering the IAEA’s questions on uranium traces at undeclared sites.
Submitting the text, reportedly little changed from a draft circulated last week, means it will be debated and voted on at this week’s quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.
Iran has warned of retaliation and consequences. Iran’s ally Russia opposes such a resolution.
“Those who push for anti-Iran resolution at IAEA will be responsible for all the consequences,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter in a message about the talks.
Last week, Amir-Abdollahian said any political action by the United States and its three European allies at the IAEA “will undoubtedly be met with a proportionate, effective and immediate response from Iran”.
A senior Iranian official on Tuesday urged the IAEA to refrain from pursuing any political agenda in his work, stating that the Islamic Republic is strongly opposed to an anti-Iran resolution at the IAEA Board of Governors.
Speaking with the IRIB TV1 television channel, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s former envoy to the IAEA, explained that the agency submits two separate reports to each meeting of the Board of Governors, one on Tehran’s compliance with its nuclear-related obligations and another on its compliance with the NPT Safeguards Agreement.
In its second report, the IAEA “claimed to have documents showing nuclear-related activities in some sites and called on Iran to cooperate with the agency and clarify the matter. The Islamic Republic of Iran, for its part, cooperated with the agency in good faith and on the basis of transparency,” he said.
Gharibabadi, who is now the Iranian Judiciary chief’s deputy for international affairs and secretary of the country’s High Council for Human Rights, stated that Iran had provided adequate explanations to the IAEA after tiny amounts of nuclear particles were found in one or two locations.
“I think there are two main reasons why the IAEA has amplified the issue and put it high on its agenda. One reason is the constant political pressure that the United States, some Western countries, and the Zionist regime have been exerting on the agency,” he said, pointing out that the occupying regime of Israel itself is not a signatory to the NPT.
Gharibabadi stressed that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has “undeniably strong political tendencies,” saying all IAEA reports have been influenced by outside political pressures and the political approaches of the director generals.
He went on to say that the agency lacks an independent role. “If there were no political pressures on the IAEA, the chances for resolving the issue between Iran and the agency would be very high, as our explanations for the two sites are technically and scientifically valid,” he added.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Gharibabadi said that IAEA resolutions are