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AEOI head to participate in IAEA conference, meet with Grossi

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
24 Sep 2022 15:46

The head of the AEOI will hold meetings with the IAEA Director and his counterparts on the sideline of the 66th Session of the IAEA General Conference.

The Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami (AP)

The Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, announced Saturday that he will visit Austria's capital, Vienna, to attend the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference on Sunday.

Eslami considered that "all countries have the right to operate in the nuclear industry and technology, and it is an explicit task of the IAEA's statute to facilitate access to peaceful nuclear technology for all countries."

"We are committed to comprehensive safeguards and NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty)," he affirmed, adding that he will express Iran's positions during his speech at the summit.

The AEOI head pointed out that "one of the things that I will mention is about the unjustified and repeated accusations against Iran for twenty years. They make claims about places that are fictitious and have nothing to do with the government at all and are essentially not (nuclear) facilities and are facilities belonging to the people."

He underlined that "baseless information on some places in Iran has been fabricated by spy agencies and anti-Revolution elements in a bid to disrupt the progress of the Islamic Republic."

Eslami also confirmed that he will hold a meeting with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, as well as other meetings with a number of his counterparts, on the sideline of the 66th Session of the IAEA General Conference from September 26 to 30.

"I hope that these talks will be facilitative so that these kinds of perceptions, which are caused by political pressure and psychological operations against Iran, will end as soon as possible, and the process of affairs will be adjusted based on relations and regulations, and we will pass this stage," he indicated.

A few days ago, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, considered that the Israeli occupation is the source of the accusations launched by the IAEA against Iran.

Tehran cooperated with IAEA on alleged nuclear sites

On Tuesday, AEOI Spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi said that Iran fully cooperated with the IAEA regarding three sites the UN nuclear watchdog claimed to have been "undeclared nuclear sites" in Iran.

Kamalvandi rejected a statement made by IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi claiming that there has been a lack of monitoring of Iranian sites, stressing that Grossi's words had "no legal basis."

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has been fully cooperative regarding the three alleged sites brought up by the agency and has sent information and answers to the agency's questions and has also held meetings to resolve the ambiguity," he noted.

The AEOI spokesperson called on the IAEA not to make judgments based on fabricated documents the Israeli occupation provided with specific political goals in mind.

That type of judgment is against the principle of neutrality and professionalism, Kamalvandi stressed. "Since the IAEA has audited all of Iran's declared nuclear materials and there are no disagreements over the calculated materials, simply observing contamination in a few places cannot be considered as implying the presence of undeclared nuclear materials."

In late August, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian demanded that the IAEA drop the issue of what the Western parties claim to be "undeclared sites", as momentum builds to revive a 2015 nuclear deal.

The nuclear deal, formally known as the JCPOA, was tanked after the United States unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, who accompanied his arbitrary decision with the imposition of harsh sanctions on Iran.

Kamalvandi underlined that the monitoring and safeguards according to the Iranian parliamentary law, "The Strategic Action to Remove the Sanctions and Protect the Nation's Rights," require the parties to live up to their commitments under the JCPOA and remove the sanctions imposed on Iran.

After the IAEA's statement and demands regarding the safeguards and monitoring of the nuclear sites, Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear agency, Mohsen Naziri Asl, said the three safeguards claims raised by the agency are a "two-decade-old issue," but Tehran still appropriately and constructively cooperated with the IAEA to resolve them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors adopted in early June a draft resolution submitted by the US and the E3, criticizing Iran for what they claim were incomplete answers given to the IAEA on uranium traces at "undeclared sites".

These claims were quickly refuted by the head of the AEOI, Mohammad Eslami, who said that Iran has neither secret or unwritten nuclear activities nor unreported nuclear sites.