Israel launched an unprecedented strike on Iran’s army and nuclear websites on June 13, a day after the Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA) board handed a decision saying Tehran was not complying with its commitment to nuclear safeguards.
Although Israel didn’t use the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s decision to justify the Iran assault, its Ministry of Overseas Affairs welcomed the IAEA decision, calling it “a obligatory and overdue step” that confirmed Iran’s “systematic clandestine nuclear weapons programme”.
Iran’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs and Atomic Power Group in a joint assertion condemned the decision, calling it “politically motivated”. The decision, the joint assertion stated, “severely undermines the credibility and integrity of the IAEA”.
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for civilian functions and that its amenities are monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog.
Right here’s what the IAEA stated in regards to the Iranian nuclear programe earlier this month, and its criticisms towards its previous actions.
Did the IAEA assume that Iran was constructing nuclear weapons?
The IAEA can’t totally assess Iran’s nuclear vitality programmes, as Tehran halted its implementation of the Extra Protocol in February 2021, which permitted the IAEA enhanced inspection rights – together with snap inspections and steady surveillance.
Iran continued to adjust to IAEA’s Complete Safeguards Settlement after 2021, which permitted entry to Iran’s declared nuclear websites (Natanz, Fordow, Bushehr) and likewise allowed for routine monitoring and verification of declared nuclear materials.
At a press occasion in Vienna on June 9, nevertheless, IAEA Director-Normal Rafael Grossi stated Iran’s current failure to adjust to reporting obligations had “led to a major discount within the company’s capability to confirm whether or not Iran’s nuclear programme is completely peaceable”.
In the course of the IAEA’s Board of Governors assembly (which came about from June 9-13), Grossi stated Iran had “repeatedly both not answered… the company’s questions” relating to the presence of artificial uranium particles at three places – Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad.
Grossi additionally described Iran’s “speedy accumulation of highly-enriched uranium” as a “severe concern”, referring to the 60 p.c pure uranium enrichment amenities at Fordow and Natanz.
In 2023, the IAEA had found 83.7 p.c pure uranium particles at Fordow – near the 90 p.c purity required to make an atomic bomb.
On June 12, in the future earlier than Israel’s assaults on Iran’s nuclear amenities, the IAEA board passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was breaching its non-proliferation obligations.
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Vienna on June 12, famous it was the primary time in nearly 20 years that the IAEA, which screens Iran’s nuclear programme, had accused Tehran of breaching its non-proliferation obligations.
Final week, nevertheless, Grossi emphasised that the IAEA had discovered no proof of Iranian nuclear weapons manufacturing.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on June 19, Grossi was emphatic that Iran’s alleged violations of its assurances had not led his company to conclude that Tehran was constructing bombs.
“Now we have not seen components to permit us, as inspectors, to affirm that there was a nuclear weapon that was being manufactured or produced someplace in Iran,” he stated.
United States Vice President JD Vance invoked the IAEA decision to make a case for the army motion towards Iran.
“They’ve been present in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA), which is hardly a rightwing group,” he posted on X on June 17.
The US president ordered his army to bomb three Iranian websites on June 22 – a call welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been making claims for many years that Iran was on the cusp of creating nuclear weapons.
Trump has claimed that the nuclear websites have been “obliterated” and Iran’s nuclear programme has been set again by many years.
How has Iran responded?
On June 23, the nationwide safety committee of Iran’s parliament authorized the define of a invoice designed to droop Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei informed the Tasnim information company.
Rezaei stated that, in accordance with the invoice, putting in surveillance cameras, permitting inspections, and submitting stories to the IAEA can be suspended so long as the safety of nuclear amenities shouldn’t be assured. Iran joined the IAEA in 1959.
Specifically, Rezaei stated Iran asserts its proper, as a 1968 signatory to the UN’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to develop nuclear know-how for peaceable functions, together with uranium enrichment.
Parliament nonetheless has to approve the NPT withdrawal invoice in a plenary.
Tehran has lengthy complained that the treaty fails to guard it from assault by a rustic with a nuclear arsenal, the US, and one other broadly believed to have one, Israel.
What’s extra, Iranian authorities have claimed Grossi is seeking to change into the subsequent secretary-general of the UN, and is due to this fact sacrificing the nuclear watchdog’s integrity by adopting pro-Western rhetoric to realize private favour.
On June 1, the pinnacle of Iran’s Atomic Power Group, Mohammad Eslami, informed state TV: “Rafael Grossi [is] pushed by his ambitions and a powerful need to change into the UN secretary-general, is in search of to realize the approval of some particular nations and align himself with their targets.”
Did the IAEA skirt controversy over the Fukushima catastrophe?
In June 2023, the Japanese authorities began releasing handled, however nonetheless radioactive, water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy station into the Pacific Ocean.
The IAEA gave the controversial plan the inexperienced mild following a two-year overview.
On the time, Grossi stated the company’s security overview had concluded the plan was “in step with related worldwide security requirements… [and] the managed, gradual discharges of the handled water to the ocean would have a negligible radiological influence on folks and the surroundings”.
Greater than 1.3 million tonnes of water had constructed up on the Fukushima plant since a March 2011 tsunami destroyed the ability station’s electrical energy and cooling programs and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.
The discharge of the water, which started in August 2023, encountered fierce resistance from Japan’s neighbours and Pacific island nations in addition to fishing and agricultural communities in and around Fukushima, which worry for his or her livelihoods.
Beijing, specifically, was a fierce critic of the water discharge plan. In an announcement following the IAEA’s July 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs chastised its “hasty launch”, claiming it “failed to totally replicate views from consultants”.
Are there echoes of Iraq within the present debate about Iran?
To a number of observers, there are.
Within the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US and the UK asserted that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), together with chemical weapons, along with pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
These claims have been central in justifying army motion below the argument that Iraq posed an imminent menace to regional and world safety.
In direction of the tip of 2002, the IAEA carried out a number of inspections of Iraqi weapons programmes.
In early 2003, they established the existence of high-tolerance aluminium tubes in Iraq. In principle, these can be utilized to complement uranium to be used in a nuclear warhead.
The aluminium tubes turned a cornerstone within the Bush administration’s Iraq mandate. As the one bodily proof the US may brandish, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President George W Bush and his advisers.
The tubes have been “solely actually suited to nuclear weapons programmes”, Condoleezza Rice, the US nationwide safety adviser, defined on CNN on September 8, 2002. “We don’t need the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
For its half, the IAEA refuted the speculation that the tubes have been destined to be used in a nuclear programme. And after the invasion, in depth searches discovered no energetic WMD programmes in Iraq.
