Iran will one day seek reparations, Tehran tells IAEA

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the permanent representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency, delivered a speech about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program before the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Wednesday.

Soltanieh told the board members: “Be sure that the day will come when we request compensation for all these damages inflicted on Iran and its peoples through these unsubstantiated allegations and unlawful actions elsewhere.”

Following is the full text of his speech:   

“Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates,

At the outset, I would like to express the sincere appreciation of my Government for the valuable support of the Member States of the Non-Aligned Movement and associate myself to the positions declared by the distinguished Ambassador of Cuba in her capacity as the Chairperson of the NAM.

    

Mr. Chairman,

    

Once again this august body is considering Iranian peaceful nuclear issue at this important juncture whereas the new report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has officially declared that all outstanding issues regarding the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been resolved in accordance with the agreed work plan. The report has reconfirmed for the eleventh time that there has been no diversion to military and prohibited purposes in the peaceful nuclear activities and materials in Iran. As reflected in the Director General’s report where he refers to his visit to Iran “the Iranian leadership stated that the country’s nuclear program had always been exclusively for peaceful purposes and that there had never been a nuclear weapons development program.

    

Iran has constantly based its nuclear policy on cooperation with the IAEA which proved that all disinformation and negative propaganda about Iran’s nuclear program and activities are nothing but short-sighted and narrowly defined interests of a few.

    

Let us have a quick look at the background of Iranian peaceful nuclear issue since 2003 when it was imposed on the agenda of the Board by a few Member States who had a hidden political agenda of depriving Iranian nation having access to the nuclear energy for the peaceful purposes.

    

There were different pretexts, at that time, under the cover of ambiguities to portray Iranian nuclear program as an issue of proliferation concern. The Members of the Agency recall very well that once a certain country and its partners were exaggerating the issue of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) particles as a smoking gun for a nuclear weapon program in Iran. Through Iran’s proactive cooperation the Agency confirmed that the origin of HEU is from outside of Iran and not as a result of enrichment activities in Iran. After the conclusion of the HEU issue, it was supposed to remove Iran’s nuclear issue from the agenda of the Board. But, those countries with political motivations turned their focus on another allegation the past plutonium experiments and in November 2004 the US Ambassador in this body called this issue as a strong indication of “Iran’s plutonium nuclear weapon program. Afterward, at the eve of each meeting of the Board when the Director General was about to report progress, the other issues and baseless accusations one by one have arisen in the Board to the extent that even they requested visits of highly sensitive military sites and asking to take samples. On all these occasions Iran did its utmost to cooperate with the Agency in order to remove the pretexts and answer the questions although most of them were beyond Iran’s obligations. Then what was the result? In all cases the statements of Iran were consistent with the Agency’s findings, thus proving allegations to be wrong.

    

Modalities of Resolution of the Outstanding Issues

    

In August 2007, the Islamic Republic of Iran took an initiative to resolve the remaining outstanding issues in order to remove any ambiguities about the past and the present of its peaceful nuclear activities once and for all. In this respect a work plan was agreed between the Agency and Iran. On the basis of the work plan, an exhaustive list of six issues was presented by the Agency to Iran. This list included “Research on Plutonium”, “P1 & P2 Centrifuges”, “Source of Contamination”, “Uranium Metal Document”, “Polonium 210” and “Gchine Mine”.

    

The Islamic Republic of Iran in implementation of the work plan has made utmost transparency and has fully cooperated with the Agency and even concluded the work plan much sooner than the scheduled time table. It is worth mentioning that the implementation of the work plan needed 18 months but the Islamic Republic of Iran implemented it within six months.

    

Consequently, the Agency in its reports of November 2007 and February 2008, has clearly and evidently declared that all six “remaining outstanding issues” are resolved, and that the Islamic Republic of Iran has answered all the questions presented by the IAEA concerning outstanding issues in accordance with the work plan and these answers are “consistent with the Agency’s findings” and that the IAEA “considers those questions no longer as outstanding.” It proved that the declarations of Iran in October 2003 on the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program were true and the allegations and accusations were completely unsubstantiated.

    

Despite the initial agreement, based on which Iran was supposed to address the past remaining issues, the Islamic Republic of Iran, on the basis of its goodwill and in line with further cooperation with the Agency, considered also the present issues. Two important legal documents, i.e. “Safeguards Approach Document” and “Facility Attachment” for Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) in Natanz was negotiated and finally entered into force on 30 September 2007. Accordingly, as Director General reported in November 2007, the implementation of these documents has provided necessary assurances for the verification of enrichment activities in Iran for the present time and in future.

    

Thus, all the so-called justifications and flawed foundations raised by few States for the UN Security Council’s engagement in the issue of Iran’s program are vanished, therefore, the resolutions adopted by the Security Council lack any legal and technical justifications and originated solely from political and malicious objectives of certain countries. These countries including the United States, France and United Kingdom claim in the Security Council to have concern about proliferation but indeed either they themselves modernizing their nuclear arsenals like the UK Trident Project or the US mini-nuclear weapons which means vertical proliferation or unequivocally supporting others’ nuclear weapons program like sightless support of France towards Israeli nuclear arsenals. 

     

    

Additional voluntary measures

    

Furthermore, as it was just reported by the Director General, Iran has provided additional information similar to that which Iran had previously provided pursuant to the Additional Protocol, as well as updated design information and as a result, the Agency’s knowledge about Iran’s current declared nuclear program has become clearer. However, as long as the Security Council’s involvement is continued, this information can only be provided on an ad hoc basis and not in a consistent and complete manner.

     

In the course of the Director General’s visit to my country, we also provided certain information, in particular with regard to R&D work on enrichment and laser activities.

    

So-called alleged studies

    

Now I would like elaborate a few points on the so-called “alleged studies”:

1. According to the work plan the “alleged studies” was not categorized as an outstanding issue since its nature was totally different. It was agreed in the work plan that “as a sign of good will and cooperation with the Agency, upon receiving all related documents, Iran will review and inform the Agency of its assessment” and nothing more.

 

2.  We should not lose sight of the fact that the Agency was not able to deliver the documents since the owner country did not permit the Agency to do so. The reason is clear, the said country wants to keep the control of such fabricated documents and manipulate and prolong the process.

 

3. Pursuant to request by the Secretariat, Iran has shown its utmost flexibility and reviewed the material merely shown and provided its final assessment. Although it was not envisaged in the work plan to conduct discussions, Iran did so even with provision of written clarifications and responses along with confidential supporting documents and final assessment. Regrettably, after the provision of its final assessment by Iran and the return of Agency’s team to Vienna, Iran was informed that the Agency just received new additional material and has got the permission to show but not deliver them to Iran. The request could not be fulfilled since the deliberation of “the alleged studies” in accordance to the work plan was already concluded.

 

4.  “Alleged studies” are just a bunch of worthless allegations and print-outs of an unknown lab-top which has no authenticity and possessor of them is unidentified and said to be dead.

 

5. As the Director General reported and repeated in his introductory statement, “it should be noted that the Agency has not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard.” By this, the Director General, having in mind the past experience, has cleverly disassociated the Agency with such allegations. 

 

Unfortunately, the events in the technical informal briefing and the politically motivated propaganda which seemingly prepared in advance of that meeting, due to the rapid dissemination of its news in the media by ambassadors of certain countries, was directed to tarnish the positive atmosphere created by the cooperation between Iran and the Agency and the resolution of six remaining issues.    

    

Baseless allegations, an endless process

    

The history of making unfounded allegations by the United States against Iran is not something unprecedented. I enumerated some of them above and the distinguished Members of the Board recall other cases such as Parchin military site which the Director General later reported to be baseless.

    

One unregistered case which I should put on the record  of the Board today was the allegations about undeclared exploration of uranium mine next to Gchin mine and construction of uranium conversion facility apparently supported by two satellite images dated 2002 and 2004 of the area and a two-year sophisticated intelligent work by the spies. Unfortunately after wasting the time and resources of the IAEA and Iran in a fruitless few days search by the inspectors and hosting team using the satellite pictures and GPS equipment arriving at the exact location, found nothing except a stone-cutting workshop a private company which had built since 2002 a few extra lavatories (alleged facilities) for their newly employed workers! It was very embarrassing for the IAEA inspectors.

    

Now the question is that who is responsible for the money and resources of the host country and the Agency wasted on such a baseless allegation as well as the damage on the credibility of the IAEA? Be sure that the day would come when we request the compensations for all these damages inflicted on Iran and its peoples through these unsubstantiated allegations and unlawful actions elsewhere. All of those allegations made against Iran are proved to be wrong and baseless and this new allegation is similar to the previous ones which doomed to be untrue.

    

In this context, distinguished members of the Agency recall the infamous case of “Niger Documents” as one of the basis for waging the war against our neighboring country under the so-called WMD proliferation concerns. Even you may recall that the US officials at the highest level in their formal statements referred to Niger documents to mislead and deceive the public opinion and to justify the invasion of Iraq while they were well aware that those documents were forged. So it would be no wonder that if the documents on the so-called alleged studies to be proved fake and forged.

    

Conclusion

    

In conclusion, I would like to state the following:

    

Iran has implemented the agreed work plan in full by proactive cooperation even beyond its legal obligations,

 

The resolution of all remaining outstanding issues which the DG described it “obviously encouraging” is a turning point in our relations with the Agency where from now on the Safeguards shall be implemented in a routine manner. In this context, the sincere attempts of the Director General is appreciated,

 

The unwarranted actions such as the recent one outside of the Agency would not have any impact on Iran’s determination to continue its exclusively peaceful nuclear activities including enrichment and simultaneously continuing its cooperation with the Agency,

 

Those unlawful actions would only undermine the authority,  credibility and  integrity of the Agency,

 

Any politically motivated attempt aiming at jeopardizing the existing positive atmosphere in Vienna would face strong opposition by almost all Member States as we have witnessed during this week. In this context, I am obliged to express my sincere appreciations to those who tried hard, particularly the Non-Aligned Movement and its Chairperson to keep the momentum and the constructive environment that was resulted from Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA.

 

I thank you Mr. Chairman.”

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