SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 5 December 2024, Thursday |

White House rejects linking Iran nuclear deal, IAEA probes

The White House stated on Friday that there should be no conditions attached to re-implementing the Iran nuclear deal and evaluating if Tehran has met its duties under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“There should be no conditionality between the JCPOA’s re-implementation and investigations related to Iran’s legal obligations under the Non-proliferation Treaty,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, referring to IAEA probes into uranium traces discovered at three undeclared Iranian sites.

Iran’s foreign minister earlier this week said the U.N. atomic watchdog should drop its “politically motivated probes” of Tehran’s nuclear work.

Those investigations, which Washington has consistently said are a separate matter, are a stumbling block to reviving the 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under which Iran had curbed its atomic program in return for U.S., U.N. and European Union (EU) sanctions relief.

Iran on Thursday sent its latest response to an EU proposal on how to revive the agreement, which then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, arguing that it was too generous to Iran. Tehran resumed some of its previously banned nuclear work about a year later, reviving U.S., Gulf Arab and Israeli fears that it may be seeking an atomic bomb, an ambition Iran denies.

    Source:
  • Reuters