TEHRAN – A delegation of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrives in Tehran next week to discuss implementation of Iran’s binding parliamentary law, which will halt official cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog group, reported on Sunday, citing an anonymous source.
In a significant change, consultations focused solely on the “political aspects” of the relationship, and inspectors were explicitly excluded from mandate. This is a condition mandated by the post-attack legislative framework.
The visit was ratified by the Guardian Council after Iran halted its official IAEA cooperation in late June, and then we and Israeli airstrikes collided with private nuclear facilities in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordau.
Council President Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf declared cooperation impossible until the agency provided “specific security assurances” to nuclear sites and condemned the attack. Sources from Al Mayadeen emphasized that this marks a “new chapter of relations” fully defined in Tehran’s terminology.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei has made it clear that Iran is left to a protection agreement, but is redesigning engagement rules under the new law.
“The new manual is expected to be defined by the United Nations Nuclear Watch,” he requested the IAEA to first correct its “political and technical oversteps.” In particular, he refuses to condemn the June strike that destroys critical infrastructure, including Natanz’s ground-based enriched plants and Isfahan’s uranium conversion facility.
The latest campaign in US and Israeli attacks has strengthened Tehran’s stance. President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the IAEA must abandon “double standards” before technical cooperation resumed, and accused the agency of enabling military attacks by politicizing safeguards.
Russia also condemned the attack, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova warning that “bombing of nuclear facilities should not become common,” and that “catastrophic risks cannot be ignored.”
She characterized the attack as “a blatant violation of international law” and a cynical attempt to justify the attack by spoofing concerns of non-enhancement.
Also on Saturday, Russia’s representative for Vienna’s international organization, Mikhail Ulinov, questioned the timing of events leading up to the US-Israel attack.
He said the anti-Iranian resolution passed by the IAEA Council in June does not consider the subsequent military strike to be a coincidence.
In a warning about the outcomes of these policies, Urinov emphasized that “the process will lead to escalation of tensions in the region and undermine multilateral frameworks such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the JCPOA.”