Demanding that Iran sign or implement the protocol is a violation of international law, although Iran voluntarily implemented the protocol for more than 30 months, Soltanieh stated in a letter to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

Soltanieh also stated that Iran has answered all questions and cleared up all ambiguities about its nuclear activities, and thus the implementation of the nuclear safeguards agreement in Iran must take a normal course. In his letter, the Iranian envoy also accused the United States of feeding “forged” intelligence to the IAEA that claims Iran had studied ways to make atomic bombs.

In its report on August 28, the agency asked Iran to provide answers about the “alleged weapons studies”.

In the letter, Soltanieh told ElBaradei that the agency had not provided genuine documents on the alleged studies and the matter was “closed”.

“The government of the United States has not handed over original documents to the agency since it does not in fact have any authenticated document and all it has are forged documents,” Soltanieh wrote as carried by Reuters.

“The alleged studies are politically motivated and baseless allegations.”

Soltanieh also accused Britain, France, and the United States of trying to derail the IAEA’s technical mandate by piling political pressure on ElBaradei.

He also complained that Iranian cooperation with the IAEA had been overshadowed.

Tehran allowed IAEA inspectors to revisit a heavy-water reactor site last month after barring access for a year.

The envoy also thanked the IAEA for resisting ‘political pressure’ by certain Western countries over Tehran’s nuclear dossier.

Iran, along with many other member states, shares the view that the IAEA ‘resisted the political pressure’ by a few Western countries trying to derail the agency from its ‘professional technical mandate’, he wrote.

Soltanieh also said Tehran trusts the UN nuclear watchdog as the ‘sole pertinent international technical organization’ in charge of nuclear activities.

After the release of his latest report, ElBaradei was harshly criticized by Israel, which claimed that the IAEA was holding back information about Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview with the Chicago-based magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published on Tuesday, ElBaradei dismissed the claims and said what some countries called the threat from Iran ‘has been hyped’ in many ways.

PA/HG

END

MNA

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