TEHRAN -- Iran will not allow inspections beyond what is in a 2015 nuclear deal, the country’s nuclear chief said on Wednesday, as the United States prepares to respond to a proposal to return to compliance with the international agreement.
“We are committed to inspections in the framework of the nuclear deal that are linked to nuclear restrictions which we have accepted in the past... Not one word more, not one word less,” said Muhammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
On Monday, Reuters quoted an unnamed U.S. official as claiming that Iran had dropped some of its main demands on resurrecting the deal, including its insistence that inspectors close some probes of its atomic program.
But Eslami said the probes should be closed “before the implementation day” if the 2015 nuclear deal is revived, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Washington aims to respond soon to a draft agreement proposed by the European Union that would bring back the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that former President Donald Trump abandoned and current President Joe Biden has claimed to be seeking to revive.
Iran has insisted the nuclear pact can only be salvaged if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drops its claims about Tehran’s nuclear work.
In June, the UN nuclear agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution, drafted by the United States, France, Britain and Germany, which baselessly accused Iran of failing to explain uranium traces found at three undeclared sites.
On Wednesday, Eslami repeated Iran’s assertion that claims of unexplained uranium traces were perpetrated by anti-Iran MKO terrorists and the archenemy of the Iranian nation, the occupying regime of Israel.
In response to the resolution, Iran expanded further its underground uranium enrichment by installing cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges and also by removing essentially all the IAEA’s monitoring equipment installed outside the Safeguards agreement.
“The issue of utmost importance is that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). All of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear activities are in accordance with the Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA is present in Iran and is strictly monitoring the country’s nuclear activities,” Eslami said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Nour News, a website affiliated with Tehran’s top national security body, rejected Washington’s assertion that Iran had dropped some of its main demands.
“The Americans are seeking to suggest that Iran has retreated in the talks but... it was Washington that had left the nuclear deal and it is the U.S. government that has retreated to its previous positions if it returns to the accord,” Nour News said on Twitter.
Eslami urged the IAEA not to raise accusations against Iran based on claims made by the Tel Aviv regime, stressing that Tehran would never surrender to the UN nuclear agency political approach taking its cue from the Zionist regime.
He said Iran believed the recent remarks made by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi had been distorted for political purposes, cautioning that Israel’s pressures have deviated the UN nuclear agency’s reports from technical approach.
Iran, he said, expects the IAEA to ignore the fuss that the Zionist regime has made against its nuclear program for over 20 years, emphasizing that the UN nuclear agency should not allow the political influence of certain entities to affect its decisions.
Early this week, Grossi repeated previous accusations against the Islamic Republic, calling on Iran to explain what he claimed to be “traces of enriched uranium” found at the country’s nuclear research sites three years ago.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Grossi said the Agency would not drop that probe without “technically credible explanations” from Iran.
This is while Iran has already provided the necessary information and access to the IAEA.
The IAEA’s claims are believed to be one of the main obstacles to the revival of the 2015 Iran deal.