Iran warns against “political action”

“Tense” meeting on Iran nuclear program starts at IAEA as Islamic Republic’s enriched uranium stockpile grows

CBS- June 6th 2022

Vienna, Austria — Major European countries and the United States were expected to seek to censure Iran as the UN atomic watchdog started meeting Monday amid stalled talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The resolution drafted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany is a sign of their growing impatience as diplomats warn that the window to save the landmark deal is closing.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors meets Monday through Friday in Vienna. If the resolution urging Iran to “cooperate fully” with the IAEA is adopted, it will be the first motion censuring Iran since June 2020.

Talks to revive the accord started in April 2021 with the aim of bringing the United States back into the deal and lifting sanctions again, and getting Iran to scale back its stepped-up nuclear program.

The 2015 landmark deal — promising Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs in its nuclear program — started to fall apart in 2018 when then U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from it

Talks to revive the agreement have stalled in recent months.

The coordinator of the talks, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell, warned in a tweet this weekend that the possibility of returning to the accord was “shrinking.”

“But we still can do it with an extra effort,” he said.

Iran warns against “political action”

In a report late last month, the IAEA said it still had questions that were “not clarified” regarding traces of enriched uranium previously found at three sites which had not been declared by Iran as having hosted nuclear activities.

Addressing the IAEA Governors meeting in Vienna on Monday, the agency’s boss Rafael Grossi said Iran had still “not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations.”