The Villain of the Piece at the IAEA

Date: 23 August 2022 - 21:27

News ID: ۱۰۶۰۹۷

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The United Nations is supposed to be a professional organization of experts in their respective fields at the headquarters in New York and at its various agencies specializing in such matters of international concern as culture (UNESCO), health (WHO), food (FAO), refugees (UNHCR), and nuclear issues (IAEA) – to name a few.

The men or women in charge of these crucial departments ought to be honest, hardworking, neutral, and persons of integrity, free from corruption and strong enough to resist exploitation and political pressures in order to ensure a smooth and satisfactory handling of responsibilities to the benefit of all those concerned.

Such criteria appear excellent on paper, but unfortunately in practice all these values are totally ignored, and the most glaring example of mismanagement and misuse in this regard, appears to be the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA has not lived up to the ideals enshrined in its constitution and as a result has been turned into an instrument of manipulation by the US, especially against independent countries refusing to kowtow to American dictates, like the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And if the person at its helm happens to be a weakling without principles, as is the case with its current Director-General, Rafael Grossi – an Argentinian of Italian origin – the result will be chaotic.

This is the sorry state of affairs at the IAEA which Washington has continued to use as an all-too-willing lever to politicize the Islamic Republic of Iran’s peaceful nuclear projects.

Grossi’s continued adoption of political approaches, along with his relations with non-IAEA member nuclear-armed Israel, as well as his non-technical behaviour, has turned him into the main obstacle to the finalization of an agreement between Iran and the big powers for the lifting of the illegal American sanctions.

He clearly has no intentions to resolve the outstanding issues pertaining to the wild accusations of the US against Iran, despite Tehran’s full cooperation with the Vienna-based UN agency.

Tehran has less than two per cent of the world’s nuclear energy production capacity, but 25 per cent of the inspections in the world were conducted in Iran.

Still the Islamic Republic, in spite of confirmation of the civilian nature of its atomic activities that are round-the-clock under the IAEA surveillance cameras, is accused of trying to build bomb when the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has issued a fatwa that manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is religiously forbidden.

Grossi, instead of discharging his duties in a fair and professional manner, feels no inhibitions in travelling to the illegal Zionist entity and disclosing to its terrorist ringleaders the videos and photographs of Iran’s atomic facilities to enable them to indulge in sabotage.

Should Iran trust such a dubious person? The answer is a big NO. The Islamic Republic, which has fully mastered the nuclear fuel cycle, ought to negotiate from the position of strength for any agreement that fully respects its inalienable rights, rather than again submitting to blackmail.