The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier Thursday that Iran would “basically” remove all cameras installed under the 2015 nuclear deal, after the country was reprimanded earlier this week by the Board of Governors. The IAEA for not cooperating fully with the nuclear supervisory authority.
In a statement, Blinken accused Iran of threatening “further nuclear provocations” and “further reducing transparency”.
The senior US diplomat called such steps “counterproductive and would further complicate our efforts to return to full implementation” of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“The only result of such a path will be a deepening nuclear crisis and further economic and political isolation for Iran,” he said. “We continue to pressure Iran to choose diplomacy and de-escalation instead.”
Iran’s move to remove the cameras could jeopardize the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which places verifiable restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program designed to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The IAEA chief said earlier Thursday that Iran would “in principle” remove all cameras installed within the JCPOA, while warning that the move could deal a “fatal blow” to the pact.
“The idea is that everything that is outside the comprehensive safeguards agreement will be removed, that’s the principle, now we need to see how it works,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told reporters at the quarterly meeting of the Board of Governors. Vienna.
However, Biden administration officials did not go that far.
“This is very undesirable and will make everything harder. But we will not go so far as to say that this is the beginning of the end,” a senior administration official told CNN.
A State Department spokesman told CNN that Iran has not yet taken steps to remove the 27 cameras used to monitor nuclear facilities. But if Iran does, it will complicate the return to the deal, they said.
Grossi told CNN that it was “technically impossible” to have a nuclear deal with Iran if it restricted access to its facilities by disabling the cameras.
“We have a number of means to verify Iran’s activities in a number of areas related to the JCPOA. “When Iran starts restricting these accesses, at some point, if the JCPOA needs to be resumed … the participants need to have a baseline, the amount needed to know what Iran has or doesn’t have, so we can check,” he said. he interviewed CNN’s Becky Anderson on Thursday. “If you don’t have that, it’s technically impossible to have an agreement.”
Negotiations to revive the deal – abandoned by the United States under the Trump administration – stalled in March without an agreement. However, the Biden administration still hopes to save the 2015 deal.
While Blinken on Thursday accused Iran of not yet having an agreement to revive the deal, he continued to express readiness to bail out the nuclear deal.
“The United States remains committed to a reciprocal return to full JCPOA implementation. We are ready to conclude a deal based on the understandings we have agreed with our European allies in Vienna for many months. “Such a deal has been available since March, but we can only conclude negotiations and implement it if Iran withdraws its additional demands, which are outside the scope of the JCPOA,” Binken said.
At a news conference Thursday, Grossi said the IAEA would not be able to give JCPOA signatories precise details of Iran’s progress if the nuclear deal is not renewed within the next “three to four weeks”.
“We are in a very tense situation with the negotiations for the revival of the JCPOA,” he said.
The cameras are scattered in nuclear facilities in Iran, including Natanz, Isfahan and Tehran, Grossi said.
“These cameras are placed in places that are involved in the production of centrifuge parts,” Grossi added of the removed surveillance equipment.
The move aims to prevent the IAEA from applying its “continuity of knowledge” – a principle used by nuclear oversight to prevent undetected access to nuclear material or undeclared operations.
“The window of opportunity is very small,” Grossi said.
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said on Wednesday that it had deactivated two IAEA cameras installed to monitor activities at a nuclear facility, according to the state-run IRNA.
The Iranian organization said “more than 80%” of the IAEA’s cameras would continue to operate normally as part of the “safeguards agreement”, but that the two deactivated cameras were installed “outside the safeguards agreement”, IRNA reported.
On Wednesday, the United States said it was considering Iran’s compliance with the IAEA separately from the JCPOA return talks.
“But we think there is a deal on the table that will return compliance to the JCPOA without dealing with external issues. This deal is available to Iran. They have to accept it. If they don’t, that’s for them, “Sullivan told reporters when asked if Iran deactivates the two IAEA cameras.
Iran is condemned
Iran has suggested that the move to deactivate the cameras is reciprocal to a resolution presented this week by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, which condemned Tehran for not cooperating fully with the IAEA. The resolution was adopted on Wednesday by the IAEA Board of Governors, member states.
Following the adoption of the resolution, the United States and European countries called on Iran to comply with the IAEA and to clarify and resolve the problems “without further delay.”
However, Iran condemned the resolution, calling it “political action, wrong and unconstructive”.
“The adoption of the resolution will only weaken the process of cooperation and interaction between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
In a report submitted to member states last week, the IAEA found that Iran had increased its enriched uranium reserves and had not provided answers to unexplained nuclear activities at three undeclared sites. Grossi also told member states on Monday that Iran was just weeks away from deploying “significant amounts of enriched uranium”.
The United Kingdom, France and Germany warned on Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear program “is now more advanced than at any time in the past” and threatens “international security and risks undermining the global non-proliferation regime.”
The United States relies on the IAEA to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, but the United States is also gathering intelligence on Iran’s capabilities.
A spokesman for the US State Department told CNN: “If implemented, escalation steps threatened by Iran will undermine the IAEA’s ability to verify Iran’s JCPOA declarations using cameras and other surveillance equipment installed for this purpose. on some of the nuclear activities they undertake from February 2021.
“This would mean that Iran will have to provide any information and transparency that the IAEA deems necessary to enable it to verify Iran’s declarations as part of any agreed return to full implementation of the JCPOA. This would obviously complicate Iran’s stated political goal of reciprocal return to full implementation of the deal, “they added.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Wednesday congratulated the IAEA Board of Governors on adopting the resolution, saying it was “high time” to “hold Iran accountable for its failure to provide reliable and timely cooperation with the IAEA investigation into undeclared nuclear material. “
“Iran already has enough uranium to produce nuclear weapons. This last stage brings us back to the familiar question: At what point will the administration recognize that Iran’s nuclear progress will lead to a return to the JCPOA in 2015, which is not in the strategic interest of the United States? ”He said in a statement.
But for months, the Biden administration has continued to say that Iran is weeks away from deploying enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb, and they maintained that view Thursday.
Henry Rome, who covers Middle East policy as deputy head of research at the Eurasia Group, told CNN that “it is very difficult to keep saying that the deal is really viable at this stage as Iran follows these difficult steps.” .
“There are two dynamics here: first, to get back to the deal, you have to have a starting point for what Iran has and where it is, and by removing these cameras, it reduces your knowledge on this very issue. This raises a lot of doubts and the doubt is not conducive to an already rather controversial proposal, “he said.
“And then the broader point is that the heavy Iranian reaction says something about where they think the deal is. Today is the day music died from the idea that Iran was trying to keep some room for the deal,” he said, adding. that “there is still a way”, but called it “a big blow to the idea that the Iranians are really committed to reviving the deal.”
CNN’s Ramin Mostagim, Zahid Mahmoud, Thile Rebane and Xena Saifi contributed to the report.
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