A top Iranian official put the controversial Iran nuclear deal in doubt once again Tuesday when he warned the U.N. agency in charge of monitoring the Islamic regime’s compliance with the deal that it would not be allowed access to military sites, calling such hopes “a fabrication.”
According to the Algemeiner, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says the claim by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano that the IAEA is allowed to access military sites is false.
“The claim of such a right is fabricated by Mr. Amano,” Velayati reportedly told Iranian state TV.
“Neither Mr. Amano, his officers nor any other foreigner is entitled to visit our military centers, because the centers are fully secret security zones for any foreigner and foreign affiliates,” he said.
The IAEA has repeatedly declared the Iranian regime in compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in the face of skepticism from the Trump administration. The Trump administration said Iran was in compliance in July, but President Trump has indicated he may not recertify compliance in October when the question comes up again.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley visited the IAEA and met with Amano last month, a visit in which she praised the IAEA’s works but also “discussed U.S. concerns about ensuring Iran strictly adheres to its obligations, noting that IAEA reports can only be as good as the access Iran grants to any facility the IAEA suspects of having a nuclear role.”
Haley also brought up the importance of stopping Iran from exploiting “ambiguous language” in the deal, as well as IAEA’s access to facilities in the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s attack on Amano is particularly embarrassing for the IAEA as it comes just days after Amano confirmed that the IAEA believes that Iran is in compliance with the deal. In August, Amano rejected Iran’s claim that military sites were off limits, telling the Associated Press that the IAEA “has access to (all) locations without making distinctions between military and civilian locations.”
It appears to have been these comments that triggered the attack by Velayati.
Iran has been increasingly boisterous in its language about the Iran deal. A U.S. decision to impose more sanctions on Iran caused President Hassan Rouhani to warn that the regime could quit the deal “within hours” if the U.S. kept hitting them with sanctions.
Iran’s head of atomic energy also warned that it could resume enriching uranium within five days if it wanted to.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.
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