TEHRAN -- Iran has hit out at the UN’s nuclear agency for bowing to pressure from its Western financiers to “discriminate” against Tehran, as strains persist ahead of renewed talks to revive a 2015 atomic deal.
“It’s a reality. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) doesn’t deal with Iran as it should,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told national television late Thursday.
He said that organizations such as the IAEA are “under the influence of powerful countries” which “finance them and in exchange apply pressure on them”.
After a mission to Tehran this week, IAEA head Rafael Grossi said his talks with Iranian officials had been “constructive” but “inconclusive”.
“In terms of the substance... we were not able to make progress,” Grossi told reporters in Vienna where the IAEA is based.
Kamalvandi said the Islamic Republic is “trying to stand up for its rights and to counter the negative image that they (the international community) are trying to fabricate of us”.
Western countries “say we are seeking a nuclear weapon and that we must be prevented at all costs”, he said.
“The nuclear industry is an essential industry and one to which we are committed. Above all, we must not give up but instead pursue our efforts,” the spokesman said.
Throughout the years, Iran has repeatedly reassured the world that its nuclear program is fully peaceful. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has even issued a fatwa banning the acquisition, development, and use of nuclear weapons as contrary to Islamic principles and beliefs.
In an escalation just a few days before the Vienna talks, the U.S. threatened on Thursday to confront Iran at the IAEA next month if it does not cooperate more with the agency.
“If Iran’s non-cooperation is not immediately remedied ... the Board will have no choice but to reconvene in extraordinary session before the end of this year in order to address the crisis,” U.S. chargé d’affaires in Vienna Louis Bono said at an IAEA Board of Governors meeting.
Bono claimed that Iran “has still not provided the necessary cooperation, even after extensive attempts by the [IAEA] director general to develop a constructive relationship with Iran’s new leadership”.

The U.S. and its allies, especially the occupying regime of Israel, have ramped up hostile rhetoric in the run-up to the negotiations.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that the U.S. was “prepared to turn to other options” if the negotiations failed. The Zionist regime has also bragged that it is ready to take military action against Iran if necessary.
Earlier this week, Israeli war minister Benny Gantz claimed that Iran’s drone program was a threat to the entire region, saying, “Sometimes the use of force, and a demonstration of it, is able to prevent the need for a stronger use of force.”
Israel has intensified its attempts to derail the talks, constantly bringing up Iran’s missile and drone capabilities.
Nour News, a website affiliated to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said the claim ahead of the Vienna talks against Tehran’s drone capabilities is aimed at building a new case against the Islamic Republic.
“The history of the last two decades reminds us that the United States and the Zionists attempt to create a long-term security case-building process against Iran, in such a way that they can restrict Iran to a geopolitical area, which, of course, has failed to this day,” it said.
“On the eve of the resumption of the Vienna talks, the opening of a new case against Iran’s legitimate defense capability not only will not contribute to the negotiation process but will be destructive,” it added.