Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday that the IAEA should maintain impartially in its monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities and avoid succumbing to pressures by Western countries.
“We hope that the IAEA will be able to ensure the objectivity and impartially of the monitoring within the framework of its technical mandate, without getting politicized, without succumbing to absolutely perverted tricks by the Western camp,” Zakharova was quoted as saying by the official Tass news agency.
“We see this as a necessary guarantee of constructive cooperation between the agency and Iran the strengthening of which we have invariably supported,” she added.
The remarks came after IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi claimed that Iran may develop nuclear weapons without providing any evidences.
Iranian officials have slammed the remarks as going beyond Grossi’s mission as an impartial UN official.
Zakharova said “such manipulations counting on presenting the IAEA as an accomplice or even the initiator of political attacks on Tehran, always pursue a single goal - present Iran’s nuclear program as the main threat in the Middle East which must be battled by any means.”
She also said that Western governments are trying to “get away with gross violations” they have committed with regard to a UN Security Council resolution enshrining the 2015 international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, known as the JCPOA.
“The international community has a clear understanding that it was precisely the West that undermined an agreement on restoration while Tehran repeatedly indicated its readiness to return to the parameters of the joint plan in the event of reciprocal synchronized actions by Washington, Brussels and London,” said Zakharova.
She reiterated that Iranian nuclear program “has always been inspected to the utmost degree” by the IAEA.
MNA/