IAEA Chief Meets with Iran Leadership Ahead of Sanctions Deadline

Feb. 21 , 2021 (EIRNS)—Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi arrived in Tehran on Feb. 20. “He was met in Tehran by Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA Kazem Gharibabadi and Iran Atomic Energy Organization official Behrouz Kamalvandi,” Gharibabadi tweeted Saturday evening. He will meet Iranian nuclear officials including Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the country’s nuclear department, and a vice-president to President Hassan Rouhani.

His meetings are expected to continue through today. By midday on Sunday, Gharibabadi tweeted, “Iran and the IAEA held fruitful discussions based on mutual respect, the result of which will be released this evening.”

In December 2020, Iran’s parliament approved a bill that

“would suspend part of UN inspections of its nuclear facilities under a 2015 nuclear deal, if European signatories to the deal do not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions by Feb. 23. It will also stop implementation of the additional protocol that allows the IAEA inspectors to carry out more intrusive inspections to Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

In related news, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, who is now the head of the international branch of the Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Newsweek that

“If the U.S. would decide to re-enter the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] agreement as it is, Israel will have to recalculate regarding the Iranian nuclear race, so you know in the past we raised our options, and I’m sure we will bring them up again.”

Newsweek, which published its story on Feb. 18, went on to report:

“Israel has a history of taking out nuclear programs with force in Iraq and Syria in past years, and is suspected to have been behind both the Stuxnet virus that attacked Iranian centrifuges along with a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last November.”