Iranian Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that the Iranian government must not compromise the technical achievements of the nuclear industry with its political goals and objectives. It must implement the law that sets a roadmap for moving away from the international nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) including barring the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from accessing surveillance footage and Tehran’s own records from nuclear sites. He further said that Iranian legislature is determined that the law must be implemented at specific times and as of May 22, the IAEA has no right to access the camera footage and information of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Bagher Ghalibaf’s sermon came after the US- Iran indirect nuclear talks in Vienna could not led to a breakthrough and looming deadlines set by Iranian Parliament by which the government must take steps like ending cooperation with the IAEA, installing additional enrichment centrifuges and producing a certain amount of enriched uranium came. In February, the Iranian nuclear agency was ordered to suspend the monitoring of nuclear activities by the IAEA under the Additional Protocol. However, Tehran and the IAEA worked out a three-month temporary agreement which limited the IAEA’s access to Iranian sites to a level compliant with Iranian law. The subject temporary limit has been ended during last week, although IAEA had strived to extend this temporary agreement for another one month but could not succeed so far. Therefore, Iranian Lawmakers cautioned the Iranian Nuclear Agency to move in the direction set by the Parliament. Iran’s Foreign Minster Jawad Zarif’s recent statement further double down the Iranian pressure by saying that Iran has a democracy in the country and government is bound to implement the law passed by the parliament. On other hand, The Biden administration claimed that it wanted to return to the agreement, but the talks in Vienna to work out a path to restoring the JCPOA have yet not succeeded. Currently, there is a deadlock in the indirect talks because US is ready to remove sanctions on Iranian government’s entities but wants to keep those imposed on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) while arguing that those are not related to nuclear non-proliferation. The second issue is regarding limiting the use of knowledge on advance Nuclear centrifuges, which Iran acquired during its breakthrough time.
However, IAEA’s experts and European Diplomats are very concern about the situation that if Iran and IAEA could not forge an agreement for another month or more, Iran would be technically free to wipe out all the video recordings of the activities at its nuclear sites leaving the IAEA’s inspector completely blind about the activities carried out at the sites after February 2021. According to experts, it would be the last nail in the body of dying JCOPA.
Currently, the situation is quite interesting, because both United States and Iran are increasing their pressure to achieve maximum benefit out of the ongoing indirect Nuclear talks at Vienna. The time is running out and if the US and its allies failed to secure the JCOPA, their efforts during previous several years would go in vain. Whereas, Iran is using this opportunity to take maximum advantage from technical shortfall of the US and its allies. The Diplomatic efforts of all stakeholders are underway to forge some common ground however, the future of US-Iran Nuclear deal is unclear.
