The Obama Administration has said that Iran is not complying with the requirements of the United Nations and obligations of the International Atomic Energy Agency with regard to its uranium enrichment programmes and safeguards at nuclear facilities.
Noting that the administration is in touch with IAEA and P-5 Plus partners, a senior US official hoped that the that the proposed agreement for the shipment of LEU from Iran will be accepted by Tehran.
“The recent report underscores that Iran still refuses to comply fully with its international nuclear obligations,” State Department spokesperson, Ian Kelly, said on Tuesday.
“Instead, it is expanding its work in uranium enrichment and heavy water-related activities,” Kelly, said, adding that it has conducted a multi-year effort to construct a clandestine enrichment facility in contravention of the UN Security Council requirements and IAEA obligations.
Kelly said that the administration is still waiting for a formal response from Tehran to the proposal that the IAEA had put forward to enrich its LEU outside of Iran.
“We hope that they will provide a formal response, but the failure to provide a response to this and its overall noncompliance, as laid out in the IAEA agreement, frankly doesn’t give us a whole lot of confidence that they will respond formally,” he said.
“But we are still not prepared to close the door on that possibility right now,” the spokesperson said.
The IAEA report, he said, noted that Iran’s failure to inform the IAEA of the facility near Qom is inconsistent with its safeguard obligations, and underlined the fact that its failure to declare this facility reduces confidence about the absence of other nuclear facilities that have not been declared to the IAEA.
The report noted that for over a year, Iran had refused the IAEA’s request to provide substantive explanations regarding its past work to develop a nuclear warhead and other possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme, Kelly said.
“We continue to consult with our contacts in the P-5+1 context, and I don’t have anything to announce at this time.
But I mean, clearly, we are going to have to review the bidding, given the fact that the -- that Iran has not provided us with a formal response,” the spokesperson said.
As I said before, we are not prepared to actually pronounce that they have rejected the deal because they haven’t formally rejected the deal yet. But we will continue to consult with them, he said.
