Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi has said that Iran will limit its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over what it calls the agency’s “silence” on Israeli strikes, as tensions with Israel and the United States escalate. Israel on Friday killed several top military commanders and nuclear scientists associated with Tehran in what it termed pre-emptive strikes to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has repeatedly denied having any intentions of acquiring nuclear weapons and reiterated that their nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only. Tehran has also suspended its nuclear talks scheduled to take place later today, as previous rounds of talks did not yield any decisive results.
“We have decided that, from now on, we will no longer announce the details of our nuclear activities to the Agency in advance. This is part of a review of the level of our cooperation, which will no longer be the same as before,” Gharibabadi told reporters on Saturday night.
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"We have always maintained the most transparent peaceful nuclear program, but when the Agency and its Board of Governors remain silent in the face of Israeli aggression or issue resolutions influenced by political pressure, we can no longer maintain the same level of cooperation,” he added.
However, IAEA, while it maintains an aggressive posture on Iranian nuclear facilities but remains completely silent on the undeclared Israeli nuclear program. Tehran said that the standards applied to Iran compared to Israel are outrightly opposite and discouraging.
Without directly blaming Israel, the IAEA released a statement on Friday stressing that attacks on civilian nuclear sites are illegal under international law and calling for dialogue.
The international watchdog previously reported finding uranium traces at locations Iran had not declared as nuclear sites and, on Thursday, formally accused Iran of breaching its non-proliferation obligations. Tehran rejected the allegations, calling them baseless, absurd, and politically motivated.
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