US, France Urge IAEA to ‘Rebuke’ Iran Over Uranium Traces

Iran annoyed at 'unconstructive action' from IAEA reports

In 2019, when IAEA inspectors discovered “trace” amounts of uranium at undeclared sites in Iran, it’s unlikely anyone would’ve expected this to remain such an ongoing, contentious issue after so many efforts to deal with it.

After so many other efforts to explain this away, Iran provided a number of documents which they said explained everything. The IAEA has responded by faulting Iran for not explaining everything, though not elaborating on what the documents were short on. This basically resets the situation.

The US and others are pressuring the IAEA to do something, and something clearly doesn’t mean to resolve the issue. The US and France are also pushing the IAEA to “rebuke” Iran for not answering the questions that they tried to answer last month.

Iran accused nations of using the report as a political tool, and promised to respond to “unconstructive actions” by the IAEA at the meeting.

This once again underscores the status quo, where the IAEA has to insist the matter is unresolved or risk a backlash from the West, and the Iranians say, not unfairly, that there’s no point in engaging further on the issue since nothing they do will be allowed to matter.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.