IAEA Safeguards Agreement fails to address post-war conditions: Kamalvandi
The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Tuesday that the Safeguards Agreement of the UN nuclear agency does not address conditions after wars.
When a country joins the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it also signs the Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which has also been signed by Iran. But the agreement is formulated to oversee "normal conditions, not wartime situations”, Kamalvandi said in an interview with IRNA.
Back in June, Israel and the United States launched military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in an unprovoked aggression. The strikes have resulted in serious damage to the Iranian facilities – in some of them enriched uranium had been stored.
Since then, Iran has suspended cooperation with the IAEA and limited its access to the damaged nuclear sites despite being under pressure by the Western countries to give access to the IAEA inspectors.
Kamalvandi said if a country grants access to the UN nuclear agency in such conditions, it would mean that the agency would collect information and transfer it to the Board of Governors, and ultimately, this information would be made available to the member states.
“Consequently, confidential information would fall into the hands of our adversaries. This would be akin to voluntarily providing them with information that could serve as the basis for their future actions. No country does this.”
Kamalvandi stressed that the IAEA can have access to undamaged facilities, but concerning the damaged facilities, a mutual understanding and agreement must first be reached, which requires negotiations.