US warns of recent Iranian actions could lead to “deepening nuclear crisis”

Iran’s move to remove the cameras could jeopardize the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposes verifiable restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, designed to prevent the country from receiving a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA chief said earlier Thursday that Iran would “essentially” remove all cameras installed under the JCPOA, while warning that the move could deliver a “fatal blow” to the pact.

“The idea is that anything that was beyond the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement will be removed, that’s the principle, now we have to see how it works,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told reporters at the quarterly meeting of the Vienna Board of Governors. .

Biden administration officials, however, did not go that far.

“This is very undesirable and will make everything more difficult. But we will not go so far as to say that this is the beginning of the end,” a senior administration official told CNN.

A State Department spokesman told CNN that Iran has not yet taken steps to remove the 27 cameras used to monitor nuclear facilities. But if Iran pursues it, it will create complications for returning to the deal, they said.

Grossi told CNN it is “technically impossible” to reach a nuclear deal with Iran if he restricts access to its facilities by disabling the cameras.

“We have a number of tools to verify Iran’s activities in a number of areas related to the JCPOA. When Iran starts restricting these accesses, at some point, if the JCPOA is to be revived … the participants must have a basis “A quantity needed to know what Iran has or does not have in order for us to verify it,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson on Thursday. “If you do not have this, it is technically impossible. to have an agreement. “

While Blinken on Thursday blamed Iran for not having an agreement yet to revive the deal, he went on to express an openness to salvage the nuclear deal.

“The United States remains committed to a reciprocal return to full implementation of the JCPOA. We are prepared to conclude an agreement based on the understandings we have negotiated with our European allies in Vienna over many months. Such an agreement has been “Available from March, but we can complete the negotiations and implement it only if Iran waives its additional requirements that are external to the JCPOA,” Binken said.

At a news conference Thursday, Grossi said the IAEA would not be able to give JCPOA signatories accurate details on Iran’s progress unless the nuclear deal is revived within the next “three to four weeks.”

“We are in a very tense situation with the negotiations for the revival of the JCPOA,” he said.

The cameras are scattered across nuclear-related facilities across Iran, including Natanz, Isfahan and Tehran, Grossi said.

“These cameras are placed in places that deal with the production of centrifuge assembly parts,” Grossi added regarding the surveillance equipment removed.

The move is intended to prevent the IAEA from applying its “continuity of knowledge” – a principle used by the nuclear watchdog to prevent undetected access to nuclear material or undeclared operations.

“The window of opportunity is very small,” Grossi said.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said Wednesday it had deactivated two IAEA cameras equipped to monitor activities inside a nuclear facility, according to the state-run news newspaper IRNA.

The Iranian organization said that “more than 80%” of the IAEA cameras will continue to function normally as they are included in the “protection agreement”, but that the two deactivated cameras were installed “beyond the safeguards agreement”, IRNA reported.

On Wednesday, the US said it views the issue of Iran’s compliance with the IAEA separately from negotiations on a return to the JCPOA.

“But in our opinion, there is an agreement on the table that would bring about a return to compliance for compliance in the JCPOA without dealing with foreign affairs. This agreement is at Iran’s disposal. They should take it. If they do not do so. ., this is for them, “Sullivan told reporters when asked if deactivating two IAEA cameras from Iran would affect the resumption of talks on a return to the nuclear deal.

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Iran suggested the move to deactivate the cameras was reciprocal with a resolution submitted this week by the US, UK, France and Germany, accusing Tehran of failing to co-operate fully with the IAEA. The resolution was adopted Wednesday by members of the IAEA Board of Governors.

Following the adoption of the resolution, the US and European countries called on Iran to respect the IAEA and to clarify and resolve the issues “without further delay”.

Iran, however, condemned the resolution, calling it a “political, inaccurate and unconstructive move.”

“The adoption of the resolution will only weaken the process of cooperation and interaction of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the IAEA,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

The United Kingdom, France and Germany warned on Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear program was “now more advanced than at any time in the past” and “threatens international security and threatens to undermine the global non-proliferation regime”.

The US relies on the IAEA to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, but the US also gathers intelligence on Iran’s capabilities.

A State Department spokesman told CNN: “If implemented, the escalating steps that Iran has threatened will undermine the IAEA’s ability to verify Iran’s JCPOA-related statements, using cameras and other monitoring equipment installed for this purpose.” purpose, for some of the nuclear activities they have undertaken since February 2021. ”

“This means that Iran will have to provide any information and transparency that the IAEA deems necessary to allow it to verify Iran’s statements as part of any negotiated return to full implementation of the JCPOA. This will undoubtedly “to complicate the stated goal of Iran’s policy of a reciprocal return. for the full implementation of the agreement,” they added.

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, congratulated the IAEA Board of Governors on passing the resolution, saying it was “the last time” they “publicly hold Iran accountable for its failure to provide credibility and timely cooperation with the IAEA investigation into undeclared nuclear material.

“Iran now has enough uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. This last milestone brings us back to a familiar question: At what point will the Administration acknowledge that Iran’s nuclear breakthroughs make a return to the 2015 JCPOA, no in the strategic interest of the United States? ” he said in a statement.

But for months the Biden administration has continued to say that Iran is a few weeks away from having enough decomposable material to create a nuclear bomb, and they maintained that view Thursday.

Henry Rome, who covers Middle East policy as vice president of research at the Eurasia Group, told CNN that it is “very difficult to continue to say that an agreement is really workable at this stage as Iran pursues these tough steps “.

“There are two dynamics here: first, to get back to the deal, you have to have a basis for what Iran has and where Iran has it, and removing these cameras reduces your knowledge of this very question. This creates a lot of doubt and the suspicion is not conducive to an already quite controversial proposal, “he said.

“And then the broader point is that the harsh Iranian reaction says something about where they are thinking about a deal. Today is the day when music died with the idea that Iran was trying to save space for a deal,” he said. , adding that “there is still a way”, but calling it a “major blow to the idea that the Iranians are really committed to reviving the deal.”