Grossi Tells IAEA Board He Cannot Certify Iran’s Peaceful Intent

Ynet reported on Saturday that Kamran Mollapour, who was reportedly working at Natanz nuclear facility in central Iran, has died but it did not confirm or reject the possibility of assassination. 

Despite Iranian some social media reports about Mollapour’s death, no Iranian official, state media or a source close to the alleged victim have mentioned it.

Conflicting reports are still circulating about the death of Iranian aerospace scientist Ayoob Entezari -- who held a PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering -- with some calling it an assassination and government saying he died of food poisoning. 

Late in May, an explosion in one of the research centers at Iran’s Parchin military complex near the capital Tehran killed engineer Ehsan Ghadbeigi and injured another employee. 

A few days earlier, Iranian government and IRGC media confirmed the death of Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh also from the Quds Force, saying he died “in an incident in recent days” at his home without mentioning any details after Iran International quoted sources in Iran as saying that the IRGC killed him over suspicions of espionage. 

He was a close colleague of Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, the acting commander of the elite Qods Unit 840, who was earlier shot dead behind the wheel of his car outside his home in Tehran on May 22. The sources said that the IRGC became suspicious that Esmailzadeh divulged information about his colleague and decided to eliminate him. 

Former diplomat Fereydoun Majlesi offered Etemad Online a pessimistic assessment on Sunday [June 5]. "There is no hope in the nuclear negotiations to revive the JCPOA," he said, adding that everything is working against Iran and that Israel utterly threatens Tehran with air strikes on its nuclear sites.

Majlesi reminded that Israel has said war against the Islamic Republic will no longer remain limited to Israel and the areas at its borders and from now on it will strike the very country where threats emanate from.

In the meantime, Etemad Online observed that US State Department Spokesman Ned Price has said that an agreement might be within reach only if Iran gives up its maximalist positions. This is while Tehran repeats its demands and Iran watchers predict hard days ahead for Tehran.

Majlesi told Etemad Online that those responsible for the negotiations are taking it toward a "final solution" in which there is no hope for any positive result from the negotiations. "The group who wishes for the annihilation of Israel through jihad appear to be approaching a serious operational point," Majlesi said. He reiterated that the final solution means war and bloodshed.

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On the other hand, former lawmaker Mehrdad Lahouti says that there is a will in the Iranian government to make the negotiations fruitful and to lift the sanctions. Lahouti said he believes the talks will bear fruit as Iran is determined to secure an agreement with the United States, and President Joe Biden badly needs the agreement while Europeans can save face by being involved in a deal that reduces tension.

Lahouti told Nameh News that unlike what most people believe, the final decision-maker in Iran is not the Raisi Administration. He added that even under former president Hassan Rouhani in 2015, it was the “political order” that supported the deal and made sure that it was completed.

"Political order" is a jargon used by Islamic Republic officials to refer to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. "That was how the Iranian parliament managed to approve the deal [JCPOA] within 20 minutes," Lahouti maintained, adding that "If it was not for approval from the higher up, the Guardian Council would have stopped the ratification."

Lahouti's remarks appear even more optimistic than they look, as some hardliners are adamant to make sure that there will be no agreement. Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of hardline daily Kayhan, which is linked to Khamenei’s office, told Didban Iran website that Iran should ban the IAEA inspectors' visit to its nuclear sites.

He added that "If Iran wanted it could have made nuclear weapons and the IAEA, the United States and Europe would have not been able to do a damn thing." He said: "We expect Iranian officials to ban IAEA inspectors visit to our sensitive nuclear and security sites in order to blind the eyes of the CIA and Mossad."

Shariatmadari claimed that "UNSC resolutions against Iran will have no value and this is something the United States and the three European states that have suggested to refer Iran's case to the Security Council know very well."

UANI said in a statement Friday it had contacted the banks “to inquire about the nature of their relationship with the Iranian regime and call upon each to cut ties with Tehran.” The group said each bank had dollar accounts “ultimately controlled by Iranian firms and banking institutions sanctioned by the United States.”

As part of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced in 2018 on leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening punitive US action against any third party dealing with Iran’s financial sector.

China, other world powers, and rights groups all condemned the move, and while Beijing’s bilateral trade fell 34 percent to $23 billion in 2019, China still bought Iranian oil, thwarting Trump’s stated aim of ending Iran’s crude exports.

UANI approached the Zhejiang Mintai Commercial Bank, ICBC, China Guangfa Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank, and Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank.

UANI’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Wallace, said a lack of firm US action alongside “warm and abiding ties between Tehran and the Chinese Communist Party has given Chinese financial institutions confidence that there is no consequence for aiding the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.” Earlier in June, UANI claimed Chinese petrochemical refiners, or "teapots," had bought $22 billion of Iranian crude since President Joe Biden took office.

Hossein Shariatmadari said in an interview with Fars news, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, that several sabotage operations against Iran's nuclear facilities and assassinations of the country's nuclear scientists have been carried out using information gathered by Mossad and CIA spies under the cover of IAEA inspectors.

He referred to a 2015 article by Joshua Rovner from the Brookings institute that had said, “Not only will intelligence agencies benefit from inspection reports dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, but they will be free to explore other areas of Iran’s scientific and associated industrial infrastructure.”

Criticizing the recent visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi to Israel ahead of the IAEA Board of Governors’ meeting, Shariatmadari said the UN watchdog must explain whether Iran is dealing with the agency or Israel in the nuclear issue. 

Grossi was in Israel in advance of a meeting of the IAEA board scheduled for June 6-10, set to discuss Grossi's report saying that Tehran has failed to give satisfactory responses to agency queries over its nuclear work before 2003. On Friday, Iran described the visit as one of the "Zionist" plans against the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Israeli premier last week issued documents from 2004-05 purporting to show that Iran used confidential IAEA files to mislead agency inspectors. This fueled reports that the United States or European states might move a resolution critical of Iran at next week’s meeting.

Following a report from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency this week expressing dissatisfaction at Iran’s answers to queries over its pre-2003 nuclear work, the US and E3 – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have been discussing moving a resolution at the 35-member IAEA board meeting June 6-10.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian Friday that Moscow was in “definite opposition” to such a move The Iranian foreign minister told Lavrov that such a resolution would contradict the diplomatic process wherebyTehran and Washington exchanged notes over the past two months through Europeans.

Echoing a Chinese view expressed Thursday, Lavrov said that such a resolution would have “no positive impact” and that “issues of cooperation between IAEA and Iran should be resolved within IAEA’s technical path.”

Over the past year, the US and E3 have held back from moves critical of Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA so as not to undermined negotiations in Vienna over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the US left in 2018.

But questions over Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work, and alleged lack of transparency over it, were recently revived by documents from 2004-5 released by Israel purporting to show Iranian efforts to hoodwink IAEA inspectors using information gleaned from purloined agency documents. This has blurred the distinction between the supposed ‘technical’ issues dealt with the agency and the ‘political’ process of JCPOA renewal.

‘Shrinking’

The administration of President Joe Biden, which came to office committed to re-joining the JCPOA as a means to gain cap Iran’s nuclear program, has insisted that not all US sanctions put in place by the previous administration of President Donald Trump contravene the 2015 agreement. Reports have suggested the 2019 listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ is a particular sticking point.

Joseph Borrell, the European Union foreign affairs chief, tweeted Saturday after a phone-call to Amir-Abdollahian that while the chance of reviving the JCPOA was “shrinking,” it could still be done “with an extra effort.” Borrell wrote he would “stand ready any time to facilitate a solution to the latest outstanding issues.”

US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said May 31 that the JCPOA revival was “absolutely within reach” and that the US would continue efforts to revive the deal as long as this held out clear non-proliferation benefits. But Iran’s accumulation of uranium enriched to 60 percent, the most serious violation of its JCPOA limits since 2019, has strengthened domestic criticism of Biden, both from JCPOA critics and from those arguing Biden needs urgently to revive the agreement.

Price Friday cited Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking with Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi to thank him for efforts to mediate both over the current truce in Yemen and to discuss Iran.