"Iran's objections and legal proceedings against the IAEA in the field of confidential information protection have a history of more than two decades," said Iran's Permanent Representative to International Organizations Kazem Gharibabadi on Saturday.
"At various times, based on our country's commitments and the mission given to the IAEA by the Board of Governors, the IAEA prepares reports on the verification of the implementation of the obligations and submits them to the Board of Governors," he added, saying, "For a long time, the IAEA's safeguard reports, which were also very detailed, were prepared and distributed among the members, and in the last five years, the JCPOA-related reports have been replaced."
He highlighted, "We told the IAEA that the disclosure of detailed information in the reports should be minimized and unnecessary data should not be reflected."
"We recently resumed the follow-up of the issue with the IAEA," Gharibabadi added.
He went on to say, "All safeguards and JCPOA-related reports, as well as Iran's correspondences with the IAEA and vice versa, are confidential," adding, "The IAEA also places its reports on its internal site, which is only accessible to its members and over 190 countries have access to the site."
"The IAEA claims that these reports are not leaked to the media through it, implying that one or more countries may do so," Gharibabadi noted.
"We believe that the IAEA has the primary responsibility for the protection of confidential information because if this information mechanism is flawed, it should be fundamentally revised and amended," he said.
Iranian envoy added, "In this regard, the report recently published by Reuters is also based on the confidential report of the IAEA, which was placed on the same internal site and, of course, can be sent to some media outlets through some countries at the same time."
"Therefore, the IAEA has direct responsibility and the countries that have access to this confidential information are not disclaimed," he highlighted.
"Iran will seriously follow up the issue through legal channels soon," Gharibabadi stressed.
Earlier, in reaction to the leaked IAEA report to the media about the installation of new centrifuges, Iran's Permanent Representative to International Organizations criticized the IAEA for revealing contents of the confidential report on Iran's plan to install three new centrifuge cascades in Natanz, saying that the IAEA shall ensure confidentiality of safeguards information.
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