The United States and the three European countries parties to the Iran nuclear agreement (United Kingdom, France and Germany) have filed a resolution with the IAEA admonishing Tehran for its lack of cooperation, we learned Tuesday from diplomatic sources.
“The text was filed overnight,” a European diplomat told AFP, information also confirmed by a second source.
This critical resolution, the first since June 2020, urges Iran to “cooperate” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), focusing on the file of traces of enriched uranium found at three undeclared sites in the country.
The date of the vote is not yet known but according to one of the diplomats, it should take place on Thursday.
In a statement at the opening Monday in Vienna of the meeting of the Council of Governors, the director general of the UN body Rafael Grossi had deplored the absence of “technically credible” answers from the Islamic Republic.
“I hope that at the end of the deliberations this week, we will commit to solving the problem once and for all because it will not go away,” the official told the press.
At the same time, negotiations to revive the 2015 pact, supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb, have been suspended since March. Iran denies having such intentions.
Washington withdrew from it in 2018 under the presidency of Donald Trump, who considered the text insufficient and immediately reinstated economic sanctions against Tehran, leading to the disintegration of the agreement.
The resolution avoids strongly condemning Iran in order to leave the door open to dialogue, according to experts interviewed by AFP.
Tehran on Monday castigated an “unconstructive” initiative, likely to have “a negative impact both on the general direction of our cooperation with the IAEA and on the negotiations”, according to Saïd Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs.
China and Russia, the two other states involved in the JCPOA (English acronym for the agreement), have expressed their opposition.
Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov denounced on Twitter a “counterproductive” action, with which Moscow “will not be associated in any way”.
