The Atomic Energy Agency reveals that it stores an amount of the enriched mineral eighteen times greater than that agreed in 2015
Joe Biden promised during his campaign to recover the nuclear agreement with Iran, signed in 2015 by Barack Obama and broken by Donald Trump in 2018, but a year of indirect negotiation has passed and “the prospect of reaching an agreement, in the best of cases, it’s tenuous,” according to Robert Malley, chief US negotiator.
The dialogue process that began in Vienna has been suspended since March and in recent days a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certifies that the Iranians already have enough material to build a bomb, and Israel’s complaints about the theft of classified documents by Iran in 2000 from the IAEA itself have further removed the possibility of an agreement. The Iranians maintain that their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.
The IAEA revealed on Monday that Tehran stores an amount of enriched uranium 18 times higher than agreed in 2015 and confirmed that the Islamic republic continues to enrich it to a degree higher than the 3.67 percent agreed then. This departure from the text signed seven years ago is part of their pressure strategy in the face of the rupture of the agreement by Trump and they insist that these are reversible measures at the same time that the US lifts the sanctions.
Tehran described the IAEA report as “unfair and unbalanced” and regretted that “it does not reflect the reality of the negotiations” with the international organization. Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs, said that they hope that “this path will be corrected” and accused Israel of seeking to change the direction of some reports so that they are “more political than technical.”
Mossad documents
This was also Khatibzadeh’s response to the Israeli strategy of trying to derail the nuclear negotiation by publishing documents obtained by the Mossad about the past nuclear program. Israel took advantage of the fact that there is less than a week to go before the IAEA Board of Governors, in which the future of the investigation will be decided, to reveal a theft of documents from Iran to the international organization.
“Iran stole classified documents from the atomic body and used that information to systematically evade nuclear investigations. How do we know? Because we have Iran’s deception plan in our hands,” said Prime Minister Naftali Bennet. The Israeli president showed the media those documents that would show that Iranian intelligence spied on the IAEA to evade and deceive the international organization.
In any case, it is material prior to 2015, the date on which the agreement was sealed by which the Iranians undertook to limit their uranium enrichment and allow investigations by international teams, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Another obstacle to the signing of the agreement is Iran’s demand to remove the Revolutionary Guard from the list of US terrorist organizations. This was also a decision adopted by Trump in 2019. Israel was one of the countries that pressed the most to achieve the inclusion of the guardians in this relationship and Joe Biden recently informed Bennet of his intention not to change Trump’s decision, despite the impact it may have on the negotiation. The head of the Jewish state thanked him for the gesture and praised Biden as “a true friend of Israel.”
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