Tehran Rejects Cooperation with IAEA Beyond Scope of Safeguards Agreement

A picture distributed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran of the sixth-generation centrifuges at an exhibition of the nuclear industry last week 
A picture distributed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran of the sixth-generation centrifuges at an exhibition of the nuclear industry last week 
TT

Tehran Rejects Cooperation with IAEA Beyond Scope of Safeguards Agreement

A picture distributed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran of the sixth-generation centrifuges at an exhibition of the nuclear industry last week 
A picture distributed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran of the sixth-generation centrifuges at an exhibition of the nuclear industry last week 

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami said that his country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) falls under the IAEA safeguards.

Eslami dismissed comments that as many as 100 new cameras have been set up at a nuclear power plant in Isfahan.

“The AEOI will act based on the Strategic Action Plan,” he said.

The Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions was approved by the Iranian parliament in December 2020. It required the Iranian administration to restrict the IAEA inspections.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said last week that the country's nuclear authorities should continue working with the UN nuclear watchdog "under the framework of safeguards."

Khamenei called on Iranian authorities not to yield to the IAEA's "excessive and false demands".

"There is nothing wrong with the agreement (with the West), but the infrastructure of our nuclear industry should not be touched," Khamenei said, according to state media.

"This is a good law ... which must be respected and not violated in providing access and information (to the IAEA)," added Khamenei

Having failed to revive the deal in indirect talks that have stalled since September, Iranian and Western officials have met repeatedly in recent weeks to sketch out steps that could curb Iran's fast-advancing nuclear work, free some US and European detainees held in Iran, and unfreeze some Iranian assets abroad.

Both sides are discussing more Iranian cooperation with the IAEA, Reuters quoted a Western official as saying, and could include Iran committing to pause enriching uranium by 60%.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani said in a tweet on Wednesday that he "had a serious and constructive" meeting with European Union foreign policy official Enrique Mora in Doha.

"We exchanged views and discussed a range of issues including negotiations on sanctions lifting,” he added.

For his part, Mora tweeted saying: “Intense talks yesterday and today with Vice Minister Bagheri Kani in Doha on a range of difficult bilateral, regional and international issues, including the way forward on the JCPOA.”

Kani said last week that he had met diplomats from the European Troika in the UAE to discuss "a range of issues and mutual concerns".

EU spokesperson Peter Stano said the bloc was "keeping diplomatic channels open, including through this meeting in Doha, to address all issues of concern with Iran".



Russia Says it Thwarts Ukrainian Plots to Kill High-ranking Officers, their Families

A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
TT

Russia Says it Thwarts Ukrainian Plots to Kill High-ranking Officers, their Families

A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
Ukraine's SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on Dec. 17 in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
An SBU source confirmed to Reuters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency had been behind the hit. Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Kyiv and vowed revenge.
"The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defense Ministry," the FSB said.
"Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained."
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that the Russian citizens had been recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
One of the men retrieved a bomb disguised as a power bank in Moscow that was to be attached with magnets to the car of one of the defense ministry's top officials, the FSB said.
Another Russian man was tasked with reconnaissance of senior Russian defense officials. One plot involved the delivery of a bomb disguised as a document folder, the FSB said.