The US has threatened future action against Iran at the UN nuclear watchdog if Tehran continues to ‘stonewall’ the watchdog by refusing to cooperate and provide explanations on matters such as long-unexplained uranium traces.
At a quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member Board of Governors, Washington urged Iran to cooperate with IAEA inspectors who have been seeking answers from Tehran for years about the provenance of uranium particles found at undeclared locations.
For the time being, the United States has refrained from seeking a resolution against Iran. Diplomats have mentioned the US presidential election in November as a reason for Washington’s reluctance.
Such resolutions irritate Tehran, which frequently responds by increasing its actions.
Meanwhile, it has been more than a year since the last Board resolution against Iran, which directed the country to comply immediately with the investigation into the particles. Despite the fact that only China and Russia rejected it, Tehran condemned the resolution as ‘political’ and ‘anti-Iranian’.
According to reports, the United States and its three key European allies, Britain, France, and Germany, again decided not to seek a resolution against Iran at this week’s conference, but the US stated that if Iran did not give the required cooperation quickly, it would act.
However, in 2018 then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 deal under which major powers lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities. After sanctions were re-imposed, Iran expanded those activities far beyond the deal’s limits.
It is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% of weapons-grade and far above the deal’s cap of 3.67%. Western powers say there is no credible civil explanation for enriching to that level and the IAEA says no country has done so without producing a nuclear bomb.
Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful and it has the right to enrich to high levels for civil purposes.
The United States said Iran should provide the IAEA with cooperation including access “for the purposes of collecting environmental samples … and it must begin to do so now”.
If it did not, it would ask IAEA chief, Rafael Grossi to provide a “comprehensive report” on Iran’s nuclear activities more wide-ranging than his regular quarterly ones, it said.
“Then, based on the content of that report, we will take appropriate action in support of the IAEA and the global nuclear nonproliferation regime,” it added.
