Iran’s nuclear chief said on Wednesday that if Iran’s nuclear sites have been bombed and destroyed, the International Atomic Energy Agency has no grounds to demand continued oversight.
Mohammad Eslami, the head of the atomic energy organization of Iran, said Iran had not breached its commitments and accused the agency of taking politicized positions, according to remarks carried by Iranian media.
He said the IAEA should act strictly within its statutory mandate, amid heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.
US President Donald Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran’s main nuclear sites in June, calling the program “obliterated,” but experts dispute that, saying bombs likely failed to penetrate underground halls, and with UN inspectors barred, the true damage is uncertain.
Alexey Dedov said accusations over Iran’s role in the Ukraine war were being used as “merely a pretext for taking aggressive anti-Iran measures,” adding that both Tehran and Moscow had rejected the allegations.
“In my view, European countries are seeking to punish any state that pursues an independent foreign policy and refuses to follow directives from Brussels or other European capitals,” ISNA quoted Dedov as saying.
He said this approach was reflected first in Europe’s stance on the snapback mechanism.
Iran has emerged as one of Russia’s key backers since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Tehran has been accused of supplying Russia with hundreds of Shahed-series attack drones.
Western governments and Kyiv say Iranian-made drones have played a central role in Russia’s aerial campaign, allegations Iran has repeatedly denied or played down.
“If the issue was not Ukraine, European countries would have found other pretexts to take hostile action against Iranian officials with the same self-serving approach,” Dedov said.
He said relations between Moscow and Tehran had reached an unprecedented level in recent years, adding that cooperation in the gas, electricity and nuclear sectors was expanding.
“Bushehr nuclear power plant is our main joint project, with its first unit having been successfully operating for more than 10 years,” he said, adding that construction of the second and third units was continuing and about 700 Russian specialists were working on the project.
