Iran President: UN closure of probe into nuke activities “political victory”

PanARMENIAN.Net - President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday, December 16 a UN watchdog's closure of investigations into Iran's past nuclear activities is a political victory for the country, lifting the main obstacle to implementing Tehran's deal with world powers, Reuters reports.

The 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution on Tuesday ending the IAEA's 12-year-long inquiry into suspicions of "possible military dimensions" (PMD) to Iran's nuclear work.

"Now the main obstacle to implement the (July nuclear deal between Iran and six powers) is lifted..., Iran will start implementation of the nuclear deal within two or three weeks," Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state television.

Rouhani, a pragmatist whose election in 2013 led to a diplomatic thaw between the Islamic Republic and the West, voiced hope that sanctions on Iran would be removed in January, "delivering one of the electoral promises of the government".

The IAEA issued a report this month strongly suggesting Iran engaged in coordinated activities aimed at developing a nuclear bomb up until 2003, though it found no credible sign of weapons-related work beyond 2009.

Despite the finding, the international response to the report has been muted, reflecting a wish to press ahead with an accord that allayed fears of a wider Middle East war over Iran's nuclear ambitions, rather than dwell on its past actions.

The Tehran government on Dec. 7 rejected the findings of the report about its program before 2003, but declared that the document showed the peaceful nature of its atomic activities.

On Wednesday, however, a defiant note about Iran's nuclear past was sounded by parliament speaker Ali Larijani, who was chief nuclear negotiator under Rouhani's hardline predecessor.

"The UN Security Council sanctions were based on the claim that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons. Now they (IAEA) say Iran did some research on that. Such research and studies are the right of all IAEA members and there is nothing wrong with them," Larijani was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

Iran has long denied having a nuclear weapons program as such. The Islamic Republic is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bans the use of nuclear materials and know-how to develop atomic bombs.