Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has countered U.S. President Donald Trump’s objections to the 2015 nuclear deal. “We have had access to all the locations that we needed to visit,” he told Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday. He said its inspectors had been able to visit […]
Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has countered U.S. President Donald Trump’s objections to the 2015 nuclear deal.
“We have had access to all the locations that we needed to visit,” he told Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday.
He said its inspectors had been able to visit military locations and that the role of such sites in its monitoring program had been “overly exaggerated”.
Amano also said, “‘Section T’ is not [an] access clause, it is a clause related to dual-use and we are verifying it using the Additional Protocol.”
The IAEA director general met with Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, in Washington on Tuesday and discussed the nuclear agreement.
In his new Iran strategy declared on October 13, Trump decertified the nuclear deal and asked Congress to decide about the fate of the agreement. Congress now has to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the deal. Trump said if Congress does nothing he himself will terminate the deal.
The IAEA is tasked with monitoring Iran’s commitments under the nuclear agreement. So far, the agency has confirmed Iran’s compliance for eight times.
The nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was signed by Iran, the European Union, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia in July 2015. The agreement went into effect in January 2016.
Amano reiterates Iran’s compliance to JCPOA
On Monday, Amano once again confirmed that Iran has been committed to its obligations under the nuclear deal.
“Now, almost two years since Implementation Day (January 16, 2016), I can state that the nuclear-related commitments made by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented,” Amano told a conference on nuclear energy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
He said that the IAEA “is not a party to the agreement, but we played a key role in bringing it about”.
He noted that Iran has “agreed to additional transparency measures” under the nuclear accord, and that the agency’s inspectors have “expanded access to locations.”
“Iran is now subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime. It has committed itself to fully implementing its comprehensive safeguards agreement and is provisionally applying the Additional Protocol,” Press TV quoted him as saying.
