Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the Vienna-based international organizations said Tehran will soon take legal action over the leaking of a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to Western media.
“Iran’s objections and legal proceedings against the Agency in the field of protecting confidential information have a history of more than two decades,” Kazem Gharibabadi said in an interview with IRINN on Saturday.
“At various times, and based on our country’s commitments and the mission given to the IAEA by the Board of Governors, the Agency has prepared reports on the verification of the implementation of the obligations and submitted them to the Board of Governors,” Gharibabadi stated.
For a long time “the Agency’s safeguard reports, which were also very detailed, were prepared and distributed among the members, and in the last five years, the reports on nuclear deal have been replaced,” he further noted.
There are two problems along the way, namely the extent of details of safeguards activities that should be included in these reports and the flawed mechanism for informing the Agency members, Gharibabadi explained.
“These reports are leaked to the media before they are declassified,” he stressed.
The Iranian ambassador emphasized that all safeguards and nuclear deal reports, as well as Iran’s correspondence with the IAEA and vice versa, are confidential.
He reiterated that the primary responsibility for protecting confidential information lies with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
Last week, Reuters reported that the confidential IAEA report said Iran plans to install three more cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in the underground plant at Natanz, which was apparently built to withstand aerial bombardment.
Iran’s nuclear deal with major powers says Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which are less efficient, at the underground plant and that those are the only machines with which Iran may accumulate enriched uranium.