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Yesterday, Israel viewed Iran’s reduction of the work of inspectors from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency as a “threat” requiring a response.
On Tuesday, Iran began to reduce the work of IAEA inspectors, after the expiration of the deadline set by Tehran to lift the sanctions that Washington had imposed on it.
“Israel regards this step as a threat and it should not go without a response,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said in a statement.
He stressed that Israel “will never allow Iran to have the ability to acquire a nuclear weapon.” He said that “Iran continues to store enriched uranium, deceives and conceals its insistence on reaching a nuclear weapon as it is destroying what remains of the IAEA inspection process.”
The Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, strongly opposed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the six major powers.
About three years ago, Netanyahu praised the US withdrawal from the agreement and repeatedly and publicly asked US President Joe Biden not to return to the agreement.
Tehran is demanding that Washington cancel the sanctions, which Trump has reimposed since 2018, while Washington insists that Iran must first meet the obligations it has walked away from.
On Sunday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, announced that he and Tehran had reached a “temporary agreement” that complies with the demands of the Iranian Shura Council and runs for three months.
Ashkenazi said Iran “is destroying what remains of the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
While Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is civilian, Netanyahu insists that Iran seeks to acquire a nuclear weapon, posing one of the gravest threats to Jews since the Holocaust.
The Iranian position
Iran’s permanent representative to international organizations in Geneva, Ismail Baqai, denounced Washington’s demand that Iran fully comply with the nuclear agreement while the United States remains out of the agreement, since the previous US administration withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
In a speech to the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Baqai demanded that the United States take corrective action, before asking Iran to revoke measures it had taken regarding its nuclear program.
On Tuesday, Tehran began to reduce the work of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, following the deadline set by the Shura Council, to lift sanctions imposed by Washington after its unilateral withdrawal from the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program about 3 years ago. years.
On the other hand, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that developments in the Iranian nuclear program have reached a critical stage, adding that lifting the sanctions imposed on Tehran is essential to break the current deadlock.
China was one of the countries that signed the nuclear deal with Iran, along with Germany, France, Britain, Russia and the United States, before the latter unilaterally withdrew.
The IAEA said Iran’s enrichment of uranium by 20% technically makes it a step beyond the level of enrichment needed to build a nuclear bomb. Page 8
