UN agency rejects Iranian claim it sabotaged nuclear site
The UN’s atomic watchdog has rejected an accusation from Iran that the agency may have been involved in a “sabotage attempt” at one of the country’s nuclear sites.
Tehran has denied the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the Tesa Karaj complex, where inspectors want to reinstall surveillance cameras.
Iranian authorities agreed on September 12 to allow the agency to carry out the work, which is crucial to reviving nuclear talks with the international community, the agency said.
The cameras were damaged on June 23 in what Iran’s atomic agency chief Mohammad Eslami called a “terrorist attack”.
The agency “categorically rejects the idea that agency cameras played a role in assisting any third party to launch an attack on the Tesa Karaj complex”, it said yesterday.
Inspectors continue to be “subjected to excessively invasive physical searches” by security officials at nuclear sites in Iran, the agency said.
Diplomats said such incidents occurred at the Natanz nuclear site.
The agency has said Iran is building advanced centrifuges at the Karaj complex.
Under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, the site was to be monitored remotely by cameras installed by the agency, and Iran was required to hand over footage.
The arrangement continued despite the collapse of the deal in 2018, but it ended after the incident in June.
In September, Iran said it would allow inspectors to return to the site, but it has since been accused of moving slowly.
On September 27, the agency issued a warning that inspections and access to monitoring equipment were vital “to maintain continuity of knowledge”.
The agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, will be in Tehran on Monday, Iranian media reported.
Talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal are scheduled to resume on November 29.
Previous discussions, held in Vienna and involving the UK, France, Germany, China, Russia and representatives from the EU and US, were paused in June after conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected as Iran’s President.