IAEA Says Hasn’t Leaked Document on Iran’s Nuclear Program
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The UN atomic watchdog has said it disagrees with any statement by Iranian officials implying that the agency has leaked confidential information relating to Tehran’s nuclear energy plans.
Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi announced on Monday that the country has delivered a note of protest to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over its leaks of confidential information relating to Tehran’s nuclear energy plans.
Kamalvandi had earlier said that sections of a document on Iran’s long-term nuclear program that have been made public by the Associated Press were confidential and supposed to be kept secret.
“The IAEA received a letter from Iran this week which referred to a leaked document and to the possibility of leakage by the Agency of parts of Iran’s initial declaration of its Additional Protocol,” the UN nuclear watchdog said in a statement on Friday.
“The Agency has sent a letter in reply strongly disagreeing with and rejecting any statement implying that the Agency has leaked information related to Iran’s initial declaration of its Additional Protocol,” the statement added.
The comments follow revelations of a confidential document -an add-on agreement to the nuclear deal with world powers- that Iran has given the IAEA.
The document the Associated Press claims has obtained in Vienna is said to outline Tehran’s plans to expand its uranium enrichment program after the first 10 years of the nuclear deal.
According to AP, it is the only text linked to last year’s agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) that has not been made public, although US officials say members of the Congress who expressed interest were briefed on its substance.
The document was given to AP by a diplomat whose work has focused on Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses the same document.
AP claims the document says that as of January 2027 -a date which will mark 11 years after the implementation early this year of the JCPOA- Iran will start replacing its mainstay centrifuges with thousands of advanced machines.
From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran will install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.
