U.S. Blocked Iran’s Mohammad Eslami From Attending IAEA Meeting in Vienna
The U.S. representative at the 70th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Washington played a role in preventing Mohammad Eslami, Iran’s vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, from attending the meeting. According to the representative, U.S. opposition to a waiver request led the UN Security Council to reject the request under the provisions of the UN sanctions committee.
The U.S. representative said his country, while pursuing a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear file, did not agree to the travel of a UN-sanctioned official to the agency’s General Conference. He also claimed that Iran had not meaningfully cooperated on implementing its nuclear safeguards obligations.
The American official alleged that Eslami’s presence at the meeting could have allowed Iran to use the IAEA platform to advance its goals without providing the necessary cooperation. He also said such a حضور could have called into question the credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency as the body responsible for verifying Iran’s nuclear programme and threatened the security interests of the United States and its regional partners.
According to the U.S. representative, activities carried out during Eslami’s tenure in Iran are, in Washington’s view, inconsistent with a purely peaceful nuclear programme. He added that this was one of the reasons Eslami was included on the UN sanctions list.
By contrast, Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative in Vienna, had earlier described the blocking of Mohammad Eslami’s attendance as a violation of Iran’s rights and the obligations of the host country. He urged Austria to take immediate action to remedy the incident and prevent such cases from happening again.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is the watchdog over countries’ nuclear activities, and its General Conference is held every year in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Vienna is the agency’s main host city.
