Iran tells IAEA to end ‘double standards’ before nuclear talks can resume

Iran links aboriginal IAEA practice to impartiality, aft deadly June struggle with Israel and US.

Iran’s president has warned the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to wantonness its “double standards” if it hopes to reconstruct practice implicit the country’s atomic programme, amid an acute mistrust pursuing Israel and the United States’ attacks connected Iranian atomic sites past month, and the UN atomic watchdog’s refusal to condemn the strikes.

Speaking to European Council President Antonio Costa by telephone connected Thursday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said, “The continuation of Iran’s practice with the bureau depends connected the second correcting its treble standards regarding the atomic file,” according to Iranian authorities media.

Pezeshkian besides declared that “any repeated aggression against Iran volition beryllium met with a much decisive and regrettable response.”

Relations betwixt Tehran and the IAEA person sharply deteriorated since mid-June, erstwhile Israel launched aerial attacks connected Iran, hitting subject and atomic sites arsenic good arsenic galore civilian areas. The attacks were past followed by US aerial raids utilizing bunker-buster bombs. Iran retaliated by launching missiles and drones astatine Israel, triggering a 12-day conflict.

An Iranian rocket onslaught connected a US basal successful Qatar was the last enactment earlier a fragile ceasefire was declared by US President Donald Trump.

Last week, Pezeshkian signed a instrumentality suspending Iran’s practice with the IAEA.

The bureau confirmed that its past remaining inspectors had present near the country, returning to the IAEA office successful Vienna. The bureau said its unit had remained successful Tehran passim the conflict, and reiterated its volition to resume its monitoring enactment “as soon arsenic possible”.

IAEA main Rafael Grossi described talks with Iran arsenic a “top priority”, but admitted that his bureau had not had entree to Iranian facilities since the attacks. Tehran has accused the IAEA of enabling the strikes by issuing a solution connected June 12 – conscionable 1 time earlier the bombing – accusing Iran of breaching its atomic obligations.

Iran says its atomic programme is for peaceful purposes and denies seeking atomic weapons. However, it has made wide that it nary longer trusts the bureau to enactment impartially.

Despite remaining a signatory to the Treaty connected the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Iran insists that the IAEA failed to condemn the attacks by the US and Israel and alternatively chose to align with Western pressure.

US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce condemned Tehran’s determination to suspend IAEA cooperation, calling it “unacceptable” and urging Iran to “reverse people and take a way of bid and prosperity”.

“Iran cannot and volition not person a atomic weapon,” she said.

Neither US quality nor Grossi ascertained that Iran was gathering a atomic bomb.

Leaders of the BRICS bloc connected Sunday sharply rebuked the US and Israeli bombardments of Iran successful June, calling them a “blatant breach of planetary law”.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies