In a symbolic victory for Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors passed a resolution ending its long-running inquiry but permitting inspectors to carry on to police the country’s atomic programme.
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The IAEA could not “reconstruct all the details of activities conducted by Iran in the past”, Amano said, yet “we were able to clarify enough elements to provide an assessment of the whole picture”.
After the vote to approve the final report by the IAEA Board of Governors, Iran’s representative to the IAEA gave a speech in which he “categorically” rejected the “existence of organizational structure or coordinated effort before or after 2003 to develop nuclear explosive device by Iran”.
Meanwhile, Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said he believes that economic sanctions against Tehran could be lifted within the next three weeks, following the decision made by the IAEA.
Najafi hailed the closure of the IAEA’s investigation as an “historic day” that opens the path to closer cooperation both with the agency and its member nations and boasted that Iran could meet its obligations under that agreement within “two or three weeks”.
He said the meeting of the IAEA Board of Governor is underway and IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano read out a technical, professional and unbiased report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program. It notes the firing chamber is no longer in the building but adds, “Information available to the Agency, including the results of the analysis of the samples and the satellite images, does not support Iran’s statements on the goal of the building”.
Iran’s Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan, said at the time of the October 10 launch that the missile, named Emad or pillar in Farsi, was a technological achievement for Iran – able to be controlled until the moment of impact and to hit targets “with high precision”. The next stage is for the IAEA to certify that Iran has scaled back its nuclear plants.
The measures Iran must put in place include slashing its number of centrifuges, sensitive machines that purify uranium to levels at which it can be used as reactor fuel or, if enriched further, in atom bombs.
Completion of the agency’s 12-year investigation amounts to another step towards implementation of the worldwide nuclear deal with Iran.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the Security Council can not allow Iran to violate the resolution with impunity.
“While your administration has attempted to treat a Iran’s ballistic missile program as separate from Iran’s nuclear program, this approach does not withstand scrutiny”, Sens.
U.S., Iranian and Russian officials have said they expect full implementation of the Iran deal, including the lifting of sanctions, to happen early next year once the United Nations nuclear watchdog confirms Iranian compliance with the agreed restrictions on its atomic work.
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Diplomats said it was possible for the United Nations sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities, something Washington and European countries are likely to ask for.
