With Monitoring Agreement Expired:

IAEA Not to Get Nuclear Site Images

Date: 27 June 2021 - 22:03

News ID: ۹۱۷۹۷

TEHRAN -- The speaker of Iran’s parliament said on Sunday Tehran will never hand over images from inside of some Iranian nuclear sites to the UN nuclear agency as a monitoring agreement with the agency has expired.
“The agreement has expired ... any of the information recorded will never be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the data and images will remain in the possession of Iran,” said Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf.
A spokesman for parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee warned that “Iran will also turn off the IAEA cameras if the United States fails to remove all sanctions”.
The IAEA and Tehran struck the three-month monitoring agreement in February, and Iran allowed monitoring of some activities that would otherwise have been axed to continue.
Under that agreement, which on May 24 was extended by a month, data continues to be collected in a black-box-type arrangement, with the IAEA only able to access it at a later date.
On Friday, the IAEA demanded an immediate reply from Iran on whether it would extend the monitoring agreement, prompting an Iranian envoy to respond that Tehran was under no obligation to provide an answer.
Iran said on Wednesday the country’s Supreme National Security Council would decide whether to renew the monitoring agreement only after it expires.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that any failure by Tehran to extend the monitoring agreement would be a “serious concern” for broader negotiations.
Washington is dragging its feet on removing all sanctions imposed, reimposed and relabeled under former Trump administration despite repeated declarations by President Joe Biden that he was ready to undo the wrongs.
Parties involved in the talks on reviving the deal, which began in April in Vienna, have said there are major issues still to be resolved before the nuclear deal can be reinstated.
The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has unraveled since former president Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from it and imposed the most draconian sanctions ever on Iran.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Saturday the responsibility lies with the U.S., which must lift all sanctions for the deal to resume.
“The U.S. and the Europeans know best that Iran made its decision by remaining in the agreement and made it survive when the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed illegal and oppressive

anctions against the Iranian people,” said Khatibzadeh.
The Iranian administration has already stopped its voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol that allowed the IAEA to carry out short-notice inspections in Iran, denying IAEA inspectors access to Iran’s nuclear facilities beyond the Safeguards Agreement.
The decision was made in accordance with a December 2020 law passed by the Iranian parliament – dubbed the Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions – that obliged the government to restrict the IAEA’s inspections and accelerate the development of the country’s nuclear program beyond limits set by the 2015 nuclear agreement.
On Sunday, Qalibaf said the Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions is currently being implemented in full.
“I have already given notice of the Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions law and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s obligations, and I emphasize once again right now that nothing has been extended after the expiration of the three-month period,” he said.
“After that, no recorded data will ever be given to the agency and the data will remain in the possession of the Islamic Republic.”
Iran decided to reduce its nuclear commitments in a gradual process beginning on May 8, 2019, exactly a year after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal. The decision, Iran says, is in accordance with an article of the JCPOA which allows a signatory to take countermeasures in case of gross noncompliance by the other side.