UN Nuclear Chief Pursues Iran Over Uranium Traces
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the United Nations nuclear agency, will continue talks with Iran over the agency probe into uranium traces in undeclared sites.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the United Nations nuclear agency, will continue talks with Iran over the agency probe into uranium traces in undeclared sites.
Grossi is due to sit down later this week with Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, after the two met Monday on the side-lines of the annual conference of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Alongside a picture of the two shaking hands, Grossi tweeted that “dialogue has restarted with Iran on clarification of outstanding safeguards issues.”
Monitoring ‘safeguards’ commitments of state signatories of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty is a central IAEA function but in Iran’s case has become entangled in negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
Whereas Tehran has argued the IAEA ‘safeguards’ probe into the uranium traces, relating to work before 2003, should be dropped as part of JCPOA revival, the United States and three European JCPOA signatories have said it must continue until Iran’s answers satisfy the agency.
Grossi told the IAEA annual conference that the investigation was “not going to go away.” Eslami told the conference the probe was based on “false, baseless information,” referring to its origins in allegations made by Israel in 2018 at the time President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions on Iran.
‘Baseless allegations’
Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told al-Monitor Sunday that Tehran was “ready to provide answers” over the uranium traces, found at three sites undeclared as nuclear-related, as long as the agency behaved “technically” rather than politically.”
Abdollahian reiterated that Iran expected the agency to drop “baseless allegations” before the JCPOA could be restored, and called for “political will to close the case.” He repeated Iran’s claim of a precedent from 2015, when the IAEA produced a ‘final’ report into possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program before 2003.
The foreign minister also pointed out that with the JCPOA restored, the agency would have access to the Iranian nuclear program “beyond safeguards.” Under the 2015 agreement Iran to implemented the ‘Additional Protocol,’ which added to the IAEA’s monitoring powers and obliged Tehran to accept the IAEA access needed to vouchsafe JCPOA implementation.
Grossi, who referred Monday to the “need to find a common solution,” may accept that the greater agency powers under a restored JCPOA could help the agency investigate the uranium traces. He told NPR in an interview in late August: “If the IAEA is allowed to do our inspection work, we are going to get there – I’m pretty confident.”
On another challenge facing JCPOA talks, Amir Abdollahian told al-Monitor that “some progress” had been made in recent weeks in messages exchanged with the US over Tehran’s demand for ‘guarantees’ it would be cushioned economically should Washington subsequently withdraw from a restored JCPOA.
On regional tensions, Amir-Abdollahian said he last week had discussions with Iraqi foreign minister Fuad Hussein over next steps in Baghdad-mediated contacts designed to return to “normal” Iran-Saudi Arabia relations with reopening of embassies. Formal ties were broken off in 2016 after protestors in Tehran attacked the Saudi embassy following the Saudi execution of Shia cleric and opposition figure Nimr al-Nimr.
Accompanied by Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and lead negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani, Raisi met in New York with both French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell. Bagheri Kani separately sat down with Enrique Mora, the senior European Union official who has mediated recent exchanges between Iran and the United States.
In public utterances both Iran and US kept up their positions as many analysts continued to rule out any changes before US Congressional elections November 8. Raisi told the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday and a televised press conference Thursday that Tehran expected guarantees over being cushioned from any future US withdrawal from any revival of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). On leaving the agreement in 2018, the US imposed stringent sanctions that sent the Iranian economy into two years of recession and severely restricts its international trade.
Raisi also reiterated Iran’s expectation that for JCPOA restoration the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should close its current probe into nuclear work carried out by Iran before 2003. Tehran claims the agency revived its interest in 2018 – having produced a ‘final report’ in 2015 – only after Israeli allegations.
According to Raisi’s website, Iran’s president told Macron that Europe should distinguish itself from US policies and resist “pressures” over “technical” issues. IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday he hoped to speak to Iranian officials within days as Iran needed to resolve issues over uranium traces found by inspectors after 2018 in sites linked to pre-2003 work but not declared as nuclear-related. Grossi reported June his dissatisfaction with Iran’s explanations.
‘Close these probes’
US President Joe Biden told the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday that the US remained open to reviving the JCPOA if Iran “steps up to its obligations.” A US State Department official Thursday told reporters Thursday Tehran was “asking us and European countries to put pressure on the IAEA and its director-general to close these probes, something we will not do.”
The official said the US respected the IAEA’s “independence,” although it was widely reported the US, and Russia, supported Grossi’s appointment in 2019. When US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, a staunch opponent of Iran nuclear talks and supporter of the opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq, reportedly in 2009 called then IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei a “pain in the neck.”
‘Credible military threat’
Also at the UN, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Thursday said Israel, “a world leader in peace,” would, with the “world taking the easy option,” do “whatever it takes” against Iran. “The only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to put a credible military threat on the table,” he said. “We have capabilities and we are not afraid to use them. We will do whatever it takes.”
Lapid, who faces a general election November 1, has been sounding tough over Iran to ward off the challenge of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and to win votes from ‘moderate’ voters inclined to Labor, National Unity, and Meretz. With Israel-Palestinian talks moribund since around 2011, Lapid told the UN he favored the creation of a “peaceful Palestinian state that would not threaten Israel,” so appealing not just to ‘moderate’ Israeli voters but to the Biden administration.
As well as electoral considerations, Lapid is keen to make the supply of air-defense systems to the United Arab Emirates more palatable to states, including the UAE, that in reaching ‘normalization’ agreements with Israel thereby ditched the Arab League precondition that this be done only once a Palestinian state was established in the Israeli-occupied territories.
Reuters reported “two sources familiar with the matter” Thursday that the arms deal was done during the summer, around the time Biden visited Saudi Arabia and met Arab Gulf leaders. Rafael-made SPYDER mobile interceptors would put the UAE is a stronger position against any Iranian deterrence over an Israeli attack and would move Israeli radars significantly nearer Iran.
In a long debate on the chatroom platform Club House earlier this week, several figures said that Iran loses at least $150 million per day because of delay and indecision in the talks for more than a year. Nonetheless, they warned that Iran is facing a threat far bigger than the delay in getting results from the talks - a government plagued by indecision.
Conservative politician Mohammad Mohajeri said this threat is far bigger than any unfavorable outcome in the JCPOA talks. Even if Iran decides not to go back to its obligations under the JCPOA, it needs plans to deal with pressing problems. "Under circumstances marked by indecision, no domestic or foreign investor will be ready to invest in Iran," he said.
Subsequently, he noted, medical doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs leave the country in droves, posing a serious problem for the future. A survey earlier this year published by Iran International, found that three out of ten Iranians want to leave the county because of economic hardship, while others highlight lack of freedoms and despair.
The survey, by Keyou Analytics, found that over 33 percent of 1,300 respondents would emigrate, permanently or temporarily, if able to.
Meanwhile, another Iran International report quoted officials and lawmakers as warning that Iran may be forced to hire foreign doctors as Iranian physicians are emigrating to other countries in large numbers. According to an official at the Iranian Medical Council, wrong government policies is causing disillusionment among young medical practitioners leading to a wave of emigration.
Hojjatollah Samadi, an economic expert and a former banking official said on Club House that lack of planning by the Raisi administration has caused big losses for the country. Iran currently sells 1.5 million barrels of oil less per day because of the delay in reaching an agreement with the United States.
Samadi added that Iran is also losing around 7 to 8 billion dollars a month in revenue as it cannot sell items such as copper, iron ore, and petrochemicals. "We are losing out even more as Iran cannot import technology to boost its gross domestic product," he said.
Meanwhile, Morteza Afghah, an academic at the Shahid Chamran University in Ahvaz, said the impact of sanctions on the people of Iran has redoubled while the government appears to be confused about what to do while it knows that the livelihood of Iranians has depended on oil revenues in the past 40 years. "The impact of indecision on economic issues is undeniable. Indecision has done the worse harm to Iran's economy, the number of poor people has risen, and the situation is fueling tensions while the elite cadres are leaving the country," he said.
Afghah added that "the decision to make up for the budget deficit by increasing taxes will impose hardships on the people, while the government is unable to use the taxes to offer better services to the people."
Mehdi Pazouki, an economist at the Allameh Tabatabai University, said that the losses incurred because of the delay in reaching an agreement with the United States should be calculated not on a daily basis, but minute by minute.
He added: During the past two months while Iran has been making small amounts of profits, Iraq has sold 22 billion dollars and Saudi Arabia has sold 35 billion dollars' worth of oil thanks to benefitting from the US and European modern technology.