In a statement, Blinken accused Iran of threatening “further nuclear challenges” and “further reducing transparency.” The top US diplomat described such steps as “counterproductive and would further complicate our efforts to return to full implementation” of the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “The only result of such a course will be a deeper nuclear crisis and further economic and political isolation for Iran,” he said. “We continue to push Iran to choose diplomacy and de-escalation.” Iran’s move to remove the cameras could jeopardize the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which sets verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program designed to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon. . The IAEA chief said earlier on Thursday that Iran would “basically” remove all cameras installed under the JCPOA, and warned that the move could deal a “fatal blow” to the deal. “The idea is that what was beyond the overall Safeguards Agreement will be removed, that’s the beginning, we now have to see how it works,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told reporters at the Quarterly Board meeting in Vienna. Biden government officials, however, did not go that far. “This is very undesirable and will make everything more difficult. But we would not go so far as to say that this is the beginning of the end,” a senior government official told CNN. A State Department spokesman told CNN that Iran had not yet taken steps to remove the 27 cameras used to monitor its nuclear facilities. However, if Iran complies, it will create complications for the return to the agreement, they said. Grossi told CNN that it was “technically impossible” to reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it restricted access to its facilities by turning off the cameras. “We have a lot of resources to verify Iran’s activities in various areas related to the JCPOA. When Iran starts restricting these accesses, at some point, if the JCPOA was to be revived … “We need to know what Iran has or does not have in order to verify it,” Becky Anderson told CNN on Thursday. “If you do not have that, it is technically impossible to there is an agreement “. Talks on reviving the deal – abandoned by the US under the Trump administration – stalled in March without an agreement. The Biden government, however, still hopes to save the 2015 deal. While Blinken blamed Iran on Thursday for not yet agreeing to revive the deal, he went on to say he was open to rescuing the nuclear deal. “The United States remains committed to a reciprocal return to full implementation of the JCPOA. We are ready to conclude an agreement based on the agreements we negotiated with our European Allies in Vienna for many months. Such an agreement is available from March, but we can “We will complete the negotiations and implement it only if Iran abandons its additional requirements that are foreign to the JCPOA,” Binken said. At a news conference on Thursday, Grossi said the IAEA would not be able to give JCPOA signatories the exact details of Iran’s progress unless the nuclear deal was revived within the next “three to four weeks”. “We are in a very tense situation with the negotiations for the revival of the JCPOA,” he said.
The cameras are set up at nuclear-related facilities across Iran, including Natanz, Isfahan and Tehran, Grossi said. “These cameras are mounted on parts related to the production of centrifuge components,” Grossi added, referring to the removed surveillance equipment. The move is aimed at preventing the IAEA from implementing “knowledge continuity” – a principle used by nuclear surveillance to prevent undetected access to nuclear material or undeclared operations. “The window of opportunity is very small,” Grossi said. The Atomic Energy Agency of Iran announced on Wednesday that it had deactivated two IAEA cameras mounted to monitor activities inside a nuclear facility, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. The Iranian agency said that “more than 80%” of the IAEA cameras would continue to operate normally as part of the “safeguards agreement”, but that the two deactivated cameras were installed “beyond the safeguards agreement”, IRNA reported. On Wednesday, the United States said it was looking at the issue of Iran’s compliance with the IAEA separately from negotiations on a return to the JCPOA. “But there is, in our view, an agreement at the table that will lead to a return of compliance to compliance to the JCPOA without dealing with external issues. This agreement is available in Iran. They should get it. If they do not, this “It’s up to them,” Sullivan told reporters when asked if deactivating Iran’s two IAEA cameras would affect the resumption of talks on a return to the nuclear deal.

Iran was criticized

Iran has suggested that the move to deactivate the cameras was reciprocal in a resolution submitted this week by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, which criticizes Tehran for failing to cooperate fully with the IAEA. The resolution was adopted on Wednesday by the member states of the IAEA Board of Governors. Following the resolution, the United States and European countries called on Iran to comply with the IAEA and to clarify and resolve the issues “without further delay.” Iran, however, condemned the resolution, calling it “political action, inaccurate and unconstructive.” “The adoption of the resolution will only weaken the process of cooperation and interaction between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. In a report to member states last week, the IAEA said Iran had increased its uranium enrichment reserves and had not responded to unexplained nuclear activity at three undisclosed sites. Grossi also told board members on Monday that Iran was only a few weeks away from having “a significant amount of enriched uranium.” The United Kingdom, France and Germany warned on Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear program was “now more advanced than anywhere else in the past” and threatened “international security and threatens to undermine the global non-proliferation regime.” The United States relies on the IAEA to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, but the United States also collects information on Iran’s capabilities. A State Department spokesman told CNN: “If implemented, the escalating steps threatened by Iran would undermine the IAEA’s ability to verify Iran’s JCPOA-related statements, using cameras and other equipment installed for surveillance.” for this purpose, in relation to some of the nuclear activities. have taken over since February 2021 “. “This would mean that Iran would have to provide any information and transparency that the IAEA deems necessary to enable it to verify Iran’s statements as part of any negotiated return to full implementation of the JCPOA. This would obviously complicate its stated policy objective.” for mutual return for the full implementation of the agreement “, they added. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the IAEA Board of Governors on Wednesday for voting in favor of the resolution, saying “it’s time” to “publicly hold Iran accountable for its failure to provide credible and credible cooperation.” with the IAEA investigation for undeclared nuclear materials “. “Iran now has enough uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. This latest milestone brings us back to a well-known question: At what point will the government recognize that Iran’s nuclear progress makes a return to the 2015 JCPOA that is not strategic interest of the United States? ” he said in a statement. But for months the Biden government has continued to say that Iran is a few weeks away from having enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb, and they maintained that view on Thursday. Henry Rome, who covers Middle East policy as deputy chief research officer at the Eurasia Group, told CNN that it is “very difficult to continue to say that a deal is really viable at this stage as Iran follows these strict steps.” ». “There are two dynamics here: first, to get back to the deal, you have to have a basis for what Iran has and where Iran has it, and removing these cameras reduces your knowledge of just that question. “This raises a lot of doubts and the doubt does not favor an already quite controversial proposal,” he said. “And the wider point is that the serious Iranian reaction says something about where they are thinking of a deal. Today is the day that music died on the idea that Iran was trying to keep some room for a deal,” he said, adding that “there is still He called it “a big blow to the idea that the Iranians are really committed to reviving the agreement.” CNN’s Ramin Mostaghim, Zahid Mahmood, Teele Rebane and Zeena Saifi contributed to this report.