February 18 According to the website of the Wall Street Journal on February 16, Iran warned that if the United States does not lift economic sanctions, Iran will greatly undermine international supervision of its nuclear activities next week.
This is the latest effort by Iran to force the Biden administration to lift sanctions.
Iran has previously said that if the United States fails to lift the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iran since 2018, it will start to restrict the entry of IAEA inspectors into Iran later this month.
On Monday local time, Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on Twitter that he had written to the agency to introduce the restrictions.
He said that these measures will take effect on February 23.
A confidential report from the International Atomic Energy Agency seen by the Wall Street Journal reporter on Tuesday details the measures.
These measures will severely limit the Agency’s ability to supervise Iran’s nuclear work.
The report pointed out that the monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities was the last important part of the 2015 nuclear agreement that was still complied with by Tehran.
In July 2019, Iran began breaking through key restrictions of the agreement in retaliation for the withdrawal of the United States and the imposition of sanctions on Tehran.
However, according to the report, Iran said on Monday that it would terminate the daily visits of inspectors to its main nuclear facilities.
Iran threatened to remove “modern technology”, including ensuring that Iran will not use electronic seals of prohibited equipment and online monitoring of uranium enrichment activities.
Iran also said that it would no longer allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to supervise its uranium mining or assembly of centrifuge components.
It also threatened to stop implementing an IAEA provision that States are obliged to warn the Agency of their planned nuclear work.
According to the report sent to member states, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that these measures would have a “serious impact” on its monitoring of Iran’s activities.
The report pointed out that Iran has reserved room for itself to implement these restrictions at how quickly.
Iran, in a letter from the IAEA in its weekly agreement, said it hoped the agency would be prepared for the restrictions on surveillance activities “in due course”.
