Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that a new cooperation deal Tehran has reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be scrapped if UN Security Council sanctions are reimposed on Iran under the so-called “snapback” provision of the 2015 nuclear deal.
“This document and its continuation are conditional on no hostile action being taken against the Islamic Republic of Iran. For instance, if the so-called snapback mechanism is activated, the implementation of this document will also be halted,” Araghchi said on Tuesday after meeting with IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi in Cairo.
On August 28, France, the UK, and Germany, collectively known as the E3, took the step to trigger the snapback sanctions and said that Iran has 30 days to offset them. The E3 stated that they wanted Iran to resume full cooperation with the IAEA, but it remains unclear whether they will lift the sanctions after the deal reached in Cairo.
Iran suspended cooperation with the IAEA following the 12-day US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic over the agency’s role in providing a pretext for the initial attack and its lack of condemnation of the US and Israeli bombings of Iranian nuclear sites. Tehran also suspects that Israel obtained information about the Iranian nuclear scientists it assassinated from the IAEA.
The exact details of the new cooperation deal between Iran and the IAEA have not been made public. Grossi said that it allows for “a clear understanding of the procedures for inspections” and “includes all facilities and installations in Iran, and it also contemplates the required reporting on all the attacked facilities, including the nuclear material present at those.”
Araghchi said that the deal “officially recognized that new conditions have emerged” for cooperation between Iran and the IAEA in the wake of the US attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. But he said it does not allow access for IAEA inspectors and that details on inspections still need to be negotiated. “This agreement itself does not create any access. Based on the reports that Iran will provide later, the type of access should be negotiated in due course,” he said.
In an op-ed published by The Guardian over the weekend, Araghchi urged the E3 countries to change course on the snapback sanctions, pointing to the fact that it was the US that left the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. He also warned that if the sanctions go through, it could lead to “destructive” consequences and made clear Tehran was ready to face another Israeli attack.
“Israel may be pitching itself as capable of conducting war on behalf of the West. But as in June, the truth is that the powerful armed forces of Iran are ready and able to once again pummel Israel into running to ‘daddy’ to be bailed out,” Araghchi wrote. “The failed Israeli gambit this summer cost American taxpayers billions of dollars, robbed the United States of vital hardware that is now missing from its inventories, and projected Washington as a reckless actor dragged into a rogue regime’s wars of choice.”
Some Iranian officials have warned that if snapback sanctions are re-imposed, Tehran could withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a step that could be used by Israel and the US as a pretext to launch another war, even though Israel is not a signatory to the NPT. Unlike Iran, Israel actually has a secret nuclear weapons program and a stockpile of nuclear weapons that’s not officially acknowledged by the US and Israel.
