Iran: Protecting vital nuclear facilities our right, IAEA must respect our regulations

Ministry Spokesperson Abbas Mousavi made the remarks in an interview on Thursday after the Islamic Republic’s authorities barred a female IAEA inspector, who had tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates, from entering the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in central Iran on October 28.

“It is imperative for the agency’s inspectors to observe the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regulations as well as the regulations governing our important and vital facilities, because we view it as a right to protect our sensitive centers,” the spokesman noted.

Iran immediately reported the issue to the IAEA and accommodated it with relevant evidence too, he added, saying,” We are awaiting the agency’s response. We hope that the agency has a convincing response.”

If Tehran deems necessary and finds some inspectors, whom the country itself has allowed onto its soil, in default of its laws and regulations or the standing agreements, “It is natural [for the country] to be sensitive, and has to bar their entrance [into its nuclear facilities],” the Iranian official clarified.

According to Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, a detector for explosive nitrates went off when the inspector attempted to enter the enrichment plant. Iranian authorities repeated the inspection, but detection equipment kept showing that the individual had the substance about her person.

Gharibabadi noted that the woman “sneaked out” to the bathroom while officials looked for a female employee to search her. After her return, the alarms did not go off again, but authorities found contamination in the bathroom and later on her empty handbag during a house search, the envoy said.

US irate as Iran bars IAEA expert over explosive tracesThe US has reacted with fury to Iran’s blocking of an International Atomic Energy Agency inspector who tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates.

The incident drew the ire of the United States, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming that the inspector had been “detained” in an “outrageous and unwarranted act of intimidation.” “IAEA inspectors must be allowed to conduct their critical work unimpeded,” Pompeo said in a statement afterwards.

Gharibabadi, however, noted that the Islamic Republic was entitled not to condone any behavior or action that might be against the safety and security of its nuclear installations.

Iran’s nuclear industry has been targeted in repeated acts of sabotage. In 2010, Stuxnet, a cyber weapon widely believed to have been made by the US and Israel, hit the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, prompting Tehran to develop an indigenous firewall to secure its sensitive industrial structures against the malware.

Many of the country’s nuclear scientists have also been assassinated by Israeli agents in an attempt to forestall advancement of the country’s nuclear energy program.

IAEA to meet Iran officials in Tehran next week

Also on Thursday, the acting IAEA director general, Cornel Feruta, said there would be a meeting between the agency and Iranian officials in Tehran in the upcoming week.

The meeting, he added, would discuss what he called the agency’s “detecting natural uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at a location in Iran not declared to the agency.”

“We have continued our interactions with Iran since then, but have not received any additional information and the matter remains unresolved,” Feruta said after taking part in a meeting of the Board of Governors of the IAEA in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Following the meeting, Feruta told reporters that the agency will continue verifying the implementation of the Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in Iran. 

IAEA visits Iran site which exposed NetanyahuThe UN nuclear agency says it has inspected a site in Tehran which Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last year described as a “secret atomic warehouse”.

He did not specify the origin of the allegation, but since last April, the US and Israel have been busy making a fuss about unsubstantiated Tel Aviv-sourced allegations about undeclared nuclear activity by Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has turned numerous public appearances into dramatic speeches targeting Iran, went live on television that month, putting on display what he claimed to be records from a secret warehouse in Tehran. He alleged that Israeli agents had managed to break into the warehouse in an overnight raid and bring back, what he said was, evidence implicating Tehran.

Netanyahu’s vaudeville was meant to persuade the world that Iran had been lying about its nuclear program. The Israeli premier, however, did not provide even a single piece of evidence to substantiate his claim.

Tehran has rejected allegations leveled against it of undeclared nuclear activity. It has, by the same token, sternly spurned Netanyahu’s claims.

Zarif calls Israel real nuke possessor ‘crying wolf’ on IranIran’s foreign minister responds derogatorily to Netanyahu’s apparently trying to blow the whistle on what the Israeli prime minister has branded as off-limits Iranian nuclear activity.

Days after Netanyahu’s allegations, the US announced its withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Washington has also accused Tehran of lack of full cooperation with the IAEA and possible undeclared nuclear activities.

Israel is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the region as verified by former US president Jimmy Carter and various high-profile media reports.

On Monday, Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, told the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction at the UN headquarters in New York that the Israeli nuclear weapons were more than 200 in number.

They ran the gamut of nuclear arms, including nuclear cluster bombs, tactical nuclear arms, nuclear landmines, and advanced radio weapons, Takht-e Ravanchi noted. He added that the regime was also capable of carrying out attacks using electromagnetic nuclear pulse.

Tel Aviv, however, has evaded joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) amid unwavering support by the United States, which casts its veto against UN resolutions tasking the regime with observing the international law.

Washington and Tel Aviv did not attend the conference, with Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov saying a few days ago that “the Americans refused to take part because Israel refuses to participate.”

Takht-e Ravanchi asserted that Israel’s ownership of expansive arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and the United States’ determined support for the regime were the only obstacles lying in the way of realization of a Middle East region free of such weapons.

Iran says US, Israel main obstacles to Mideast free of nuclear weaponsIran says the establishment of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons is being impeded by the US and Israel.

Feruta, meanwhile, pointed to the country’s allowing the volume of its heavy water reservoir to exceed the 130-ton limit, which has been set by Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with major world countries.

The Islamic Republic passed the cap and exceeded another limit set by the accord on the purity of its enriched uranium output as part of a set of countermeasures, which Tehran launched in May.

The retaliatory steps are meant as responses to the US’s illegal and unilateral departure from the multi-party deal and its reimposition of sanctions. They are also a reprisal for the European deal partners’ bowing under Washington’s pressure and refusing to uphold Tehran’s business interests as they are contractually obliged.