IAEA Team to Visit Tehran in Coming Days

Head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, visits Isfahan last Tuesday. (dpa)
Head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, visits Isfahan last Tuesday. (dpa)
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IAEA Team to Visit Tehran in Coming Days

Head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, visits Isfahan last Tuesday. (dpa)
Head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, visits Isfahan last Tuesday. (dpa)

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit Tehran in the coming days to finalize a draft text on the implementation of an agreement that will address all outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian news outlets said on Sunday.

The official IRNA news agency said Iran and the Agency are working to finalize a draft text for bilateral cooperation, before head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, presents his quarterly report on Iran's nuclear activities at the quarterly meeting of the Agency's 35-nation, Board of Governors (BoG), which begins on June 3.

At a meeting last February, major powers demanded that Grossi provide an early report on Iranian activities to discuss possible action against Tehran.

Grossi flew to Iran last week, 14 months after the two sides had reached an agreement over unresolved issues, particularly an investigation into unexplained uranium traces found at two out of three Iranian sites the IAEA team inspected after months of stonewalling.

Despite the agreement, the IAEA still faces a range of difficulties in Iran, including the fact Tehran only implemented a small fraction of what Grossi thought it committed to in a “Joint Statement” on future cooperation they made in March 2023.

According to IRNA, the IAEA team will discuss in Tehran three main issues. The first part concerns past issues that were closed in the 2015 nuclear deal in the form of the PMD (Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program) file. In this part, the two sides will discuss the unexplained uranium traces the IAEA found at two Iranian sites.

The second part concerns current conditions at the framework of compliance found in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its annexes.

And the third part concerns the person of the Director General of the IAEA, who must act as a facilitator and mediator to remove obstacles and resolve issues, which are mainly political, in a constructive and successful manner within the framework of the Agency’s professional responsibility, said IRNA.

The three issues were raised last Tuesday by Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami in Isfahan during a press conference with Grossi, who stressed “we do not seek to have a new document” after agreeing with his Iranian counterpart to activate a March 2023 joint statement as a path forward for cooperation between the IAEA and Iran.

Grossi later said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that at his meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, he proposed “concrete practical measures” with the “aim of restoring process of confidence building and increasing transparency.”

For his part, Abdollahian emphasized that the IAEA must take unbiased and professional positions.



ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
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ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)

Judges at the International Criminal Court want Hungary to explain why it failed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest earlier this month.

In a filing released late Wednesday, The Hague-based court initiated non-compliance proceedings against Hungary after the country gave Netanyahu a red carpet welcome despite an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.

During the visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced his country would quit the court, claiming on state radio that the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

The Hungarian leader, regarded by critics as an autocrat and the EU’s most intransigent spoiler in the bloc’s decision-making, defended his decision to not arrest Netanyahu.

“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orbán said at the time, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.

Judges at the ICC have previously dismissed similar arguments.

The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary’s defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before his arrival, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”

A spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on the non-compliance proceedings.

Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the sole non-signatory within the 27-member European Union. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.

Hungary has until May 23 to submit evidence in its defense.