Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has rejected some of the assessments made in a report issued by the agency last week, considering the whole report “totally unprofessional, fictitious, unfair and misleading.”
This came in a speech delivered on Thursday by the Agency’s Board of Governors, which was launched in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Monday, in which he criticized the report of the Agency’s Director-General, Rafael Grossi, on Iran, and his speech at the opening of that meeting.
Ambassador Abadi mentioned that the report included assessments of the presence of nuclear materials or activities in four sites that were not reported to the Agency, and that the necessary answers to the questions directed to his country regarding these sites were not provided.
The ambassador indicated that his country provided the necessary explanations regarding some of the places concerned in writing and verbally, noting also that the assessments of other addresses in the report are based on images obtained from a private satellite 20 years ago, and therefore it is not possible to determine whether nuclear activity is being carried out in those Titles based on these images or not.
“It is a matter of concern that the agency has brought up many trivial and outdated issues and that events have been amplified,” the Iranian ambassador continued, adding, “This is at a time when the agency must avoid political approaches and maintain professionalism in its approach and reporting.”
“Iran is a country that has hosted more than 20 percent of the agency’s global inspections, and the agency’s most robust verification and monitoring activities have been in place for more than 5 years, so how can a tiny amount of material dating back two decades affect the peaceful nature of the program,” said Ebadi. Therefore, the assessment of the institution in its report is totally unprofessional, misleading and unfair.”
Abadi wished the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to change his attitude towards his country, adding, “Otherwise, this method will negatively affect Iran’s approach to the institution.”
“I am very concerned about the finding of nuclear material in undeclared areas of Iran, and the current locations of this nuclear material are not known to the Agency,” Grossi said at the start of Monday’s governors’ meeting on Iran’s nuclear activities.
Grossi also said that Iran had not shared with the agency compelling information about security oversight, which would seriously affect the agency’s ability to provide assurances about the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
