Having failed to convince the UN Security Council (UNSC) to extend an arms embargo on Iran, the US sent Brian Hook, the US Special Representative for Iran, to meet with IAEA's Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi in the Austrian capital Vienna on Wednesday to “discuss the IAEA’s verification work in Iran and express full support for the Agency’s professionalism and objectivity.”
Grossi later posted a picture of his meeting with Hook on Twitter with both wearing no mask amid the COVID-19 crisis, saying the two had discussed Iran’s compliance with the IAEA’s safeguard regime.
In an ironic tweet, Araqchi reacted to the meeting and told Grossi, “You would better keep both social and political distancing.”
He also called on the UN nuclear watchdog to observe the principle of impartiality and professionalism in the IAEA.
The US recently served the UNSC with a draft resolution on the extension of the arms embargo, however, its appeal fell flat at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia and China rejected it outright and close allies of the US were ambivalent.
Addressing a virtual UNSC meeting on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the United States was an “outlaw bully” that the world body should not surrender to, warning that giving in to Washington’s pressure threatens to restore the “law of the jungle.”