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| US State Department spokesman Ned Price gives a regular briefing on February 22, 2021 (local time). © Reuters = News 1 |
The U.S. expressed concern that under Iran’s pressure to ban emergency inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), IAEA Secretary-General Rafael Grossey urgently flew to Iran and temporarily agreed to maintain a nuclear inspection for three months instead of stopping the emergency inspection. did. It is intended that Iran must fully implement the’Additional Protocol’ with nuclear inspection as the main point.
According to the AFP news agency on the 23rd, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that day, “I highly appreciate Mr. Grossey’s expertise,” and “I repeatedly urge Iran to fully implement its promises to allow inspections and ban nuclear proliferation.”
Earlier, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that if the parties to the nuclear agreement (JCPOA, Comprehensive Joint Action Plan) do not lift economic sanctions by the 21st, it will stop implementing the additional protocol, which is based on the IAEA’s nuclear inspection. Accordingly, President Grossey visited Iran on the 20th and 21st and returned with a provisional agreement to allow visits to nuclear facilities for three months, even if “voluntary transparency measures (allowing unannounced checks)” were stopped.
It was an agreement to leave room for’diplomacy’ in the context of a growing nervous war between the United States and Iran. Earlier, the European Union’s high-ranking foreign and security policy representative Joseph Borrell proposed an informal talk to Iran on a nuclear agreement, and Iran is also considering it, and there is a prospect that the conflict will be resolved through EU arbitration.
“We are of course concerned that Iran intends to stop implementing additional protocols and related actions during the week,” said Price. “Now the agenda is on the table.” “If Iran fully complies with the agreement, we are ready to take the same action,” he urged Iran to respond to the dialogue.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Hamenei, raised the pressure level in a speech on state TV, saying that it can enrich uranium with a purity of 60% if necessary. But a spokesperson for Price declined to comment, saying it “sounds like home-based threats,” Reuters said.
Before his inauguration, President Joe Biden indicated his intention to return to the “Comprehensive Joint Action Plan for Solving Iran’s Nuclear Issue (JCPOA)”, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018. As the US presupposes Iran’s “observance of the nuclear agreement”, the distance between the two sides is seldom narrowing.
The nuclear agreement is what the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France, and Germany promised to lift international economic sanctions if Iran restricts nuclear development in July 2015.