IAEA demands above Iran’s obligations

A senior Iranian nuclear official insists that latest demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from Iran are beyond the country’s nuclear commitments.

“Demands and expectations from Iran presented in IAEA Director General Yukia Amano’s new report are outside Iran’s commitments to the NPT,” Iranian Ambassador to IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh told IRNA after an IAEA briefing on Wednesday.

Soltanieh said that the report gets into several issues that are outside the IAEA Safeguards Agreements and are included in the Additional Protocol, which is not binding.

He said that originally Iran had voluntarily implemented the Additional Protocol but suspended the goodwill effort after the UN Security Council interfered in the country’s nuclear program.

“We explicitly announced during this briefing that the latest report will undermine the technical status of the agency,” Soltanieh emphasized.

An IAEA briefing session is usually held before the meeting of the Board of Governors on IAEA reports.

During the briefing session, the deputy director general of the IAEA provides explanations on the latest reports and responds to technical questions.

The IAEA on Monday released its latest report on Iran’s nuclear work, in which it once gain confirmed that it continued to “verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.”

The report, however, urged Iran to “cooperate in clarifying outstanding issues,” also calling on Iran “to act strictly in accordance with the provisions of, and to ratify promptly, the Additional Protocol.”

Iran says it has answered all questions presented by the IAEA, adding that its cooperation with the body has been over and above its legal obligations.