Zarif: US, ’Israel’ Won’t Be Allowed to Trifle With IAEA

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said as nuclear armed parties, the United States and ‘Israel’ will not be allowed to play around with the UN nuclear watchdog and its mission.

“Of course, we will not allow those that both oppose the agency’s goals and disrupt our region and the world’s peace and security by owning nuclear weapons, namely the Zionist regime and the United States that is the sole party to have used nuclear arms, to mock the agency’s goals and trifle with it,” Zarif said on Monday.

The US became the first and ultimately the only country to use nuclear arms when it leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. ‘Israel’ has also been revealed across numerous reports and by various current and former world authorities to be the sole party in possession of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Washington and Tel Aviv have, however, continually been accusing Iran’s peaceful nuclear work of diversion towards non-peaceful purposes.

They have been trying to pressure the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] into coming up with excuses to inspect locations inside the Islamic Republic that they claim has hosted “undeclared” nuclear activity in the past.

Earlier in the year, the agency requested access to two such alleged sites, citing information provided to it by the ‘Israeli’ intelligence service. Tehran has strongly rejected the claim, and reminded that the IAEA’s mandate prevents it from taking orders from any spy service.

Zarif likewise noted that Iran’s cooperation with the agency was “based on the principle of transparency that the Islamic Republic has observed.”

He reminded that in line with a religious decree issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Iran “neither has nor will ever pursue” nuclear weapons.

As per Imam Khamenei’s decree and in line with ideological principles, the weapons are considered to be “religiously forbidden,” Zarif said, adding that the country also perceives such weapons to be a source of “strategic detriment” and thus refuses to either produce or obtain them.