White House rejects linking Iran nuclear deal, IAEA probes

There should be no conditionality between the re-implementation of the Iran nuclear deal and verifying whether Tehran has upheld its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the White House said on Friday.

“There should not be any conditionality between re-implementation of the JCPOA and investigations related to Iran’s legal obligations under the non-proliferation treaty,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, referring to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probes into uranium traces found at three undeclared Iranian sites.

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Iran’s foreign minister earlier this week said the UN atomic watchdog should drop its “politically motivated probes” of Tehran’s nuclear work.

Those investigations, which Washington has consistently said are a separate matter, are a stumbling block to reviving the 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under which Iran had curbed its atomic program in return for US, UN and European Union (EU) sanctions relief.

Iran on Thursday sent its latest response to an EU proposal on how to revive the agreement, which then-US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, arguing that it was too generous to Iran.

Tehran resumed some of its previously banned nuclear work about a year later, reviving US, Gulf Arab and Israeli fears that it may be seeking an atomic bomb, an ambition Iran denies.

Read more: US still hoping for Iran nuclear deal, ‘but we’re not going to stay at it forever’