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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano addresses the media after a board of governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna January 24, 2014. The U.N. atomic agency asked member countries on Friday for more money to fund its work checking Iran complies with a deal aimed at easing a decade-long stand-off over its nuclear activities. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (AUSTRIA – Tags: POLITICS ENERGY)


IAEA: Iran’s Nuclear Deal Still Fragile

by | Oct 8, 2016 | World |

IAEA: Iran’s Nuclear Deal Still Fragile

London- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano revealed that the implementation of a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers is still fragile, warning that small mistakes can have grave consequences.

Iran and six major powers, including the United States, struck an agreement last year, restricting Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against Iran.

“The implementation of the agreement is still fragile,” IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in an interview with the German news agency DPA published on Friday before a trip to Germany.

“Small technical mistakes, small failures in implementation can become big political issues that could have a large negative influence on the agreement,” he added.

Amano’s agency reported that Iran so far has stayed within the terms of the agreement. Those include limits on its stockpile of enriched uranium and the number of its centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, it has installed.

Iran has also complained that the United States is not keeping its side of the deal. It wants Washington to do more to encourage banks to do business with Iran. Many are wary that doing so would run afoul of U.S. sanctions still in place.

Earlier this week, speaker of the Iranian parliament cancelled talks with German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel intended to improve Germany’s trade ties with Iran. The speaker, Ali Larijani, gave no reason, but the cancellation came after Gabriel urged Iran to pursue reforms and work for a ceasefire in Syria, where Tehran supports regime head Bashar al-Assad.

Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for US president, has strongly criticized the deal, though he conceded that it would be hard to tear it up as he had previously said he would.

The United States says it has done everything required by the agreement, which was also signed by Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.

“There is little trust,” Amano said, referring to the United States and Iran.

Amano’s comments come ten days after the U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Iran’s Ali Akbar Salehi exchanged indirect criticism on the fringes of a U.N. meeting for IAEA member states.

The United States has kept its side of a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran has no reason to complain that Washington has not done enough on lifting sanctions against it, Moniz said.

Iran’s top envoy to the meeting, Salehi, however, threateningly repeated his government’s complaint.

“Expectations regarding comprehensive and expeditious removal of all sanctions as stipulated in the JCPOA have yet to be met,” Salehi said in a speech to the meeting, using the deal’s full name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

More so, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that the U.S. approach to sanctions in recent months was “flawed” and “should be rectified forthwith”.