Two weeks ago, Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), told an agency Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, that IAEA inspectors have been denied access to Iran for over three years. He expressed grave fears about the regime’s violation of its commitments to the IAEA, under the terms of Article 18 of Iran’s Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement. He warned that the mullahs have continued to increase their stockpile of enriched uranium, much of which is now at 60% purity, a hair’s breadth away from weapons grade. Grossi said: “There has been no progress in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues. Iran has not provided the Agency with technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at Varamin and Turquzabad or informed the Agency of the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment.”

Based on Rafael Grossi’s evidence, France, the UK and Germany, as original signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, prepared a draft resolution demanding immediate action from the Iranian regime to restore access by the IAEA’s inspectors. The resolution was passed with 20 countries voting in favour, two against, and 12 abstentions. The JCPOA was a defective brainchild of the Obama administration. It was signed in 2015 by China, Russia, France, the UK and US, the five permanent members of the UNSC, plus Germany and the European Union. President Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the JCPOA in 2018, describing it as “the worst deal ever,” following revelations that the mullahs had clandestinely continued to accelerate their efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. President Biden’s repeated attempts to renew the nuclear agreement foundered after widespread condemnation of his appeasement policy towards the repressive regime and clear evidence that they were accelerating their work on building a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA resolution was, in the words of Mrs Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – the main democratic opposition movement – “inevitable and necessary but wholly inadequate.” Mrs Rajavi urged the nuclear file on Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council (UNSC). She said the UN had the opportunity to place the regime under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military and non-military action to “restore international peace and security.” Mrs Rajavi also urged the UNSC to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s Gestapo – as a terrorist organization and to recognize the right of the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs’ tyrannical government. The IRGC was designated as a terrorist organization by the Americans in 2019 and this week, Canada followed suit. It is time for the EU and UK to do likewise. Mrs Rajavi concluded: “The policy of appeasement, endless negotiations, and undue concessions have allowed the regime to advance its nuclear ambitions without significant repercussions, providing it with ample opportunity.”

The Iranian Resistance were the first to stun Western intelligence agencies by revealing the presence of a secret nuclear project in Iran back in 1991. Supporters of the Resistance Units inside the regime have risked their lives to provide constant updates on the mullahs’ belligerent nuclear activities. The Iranian Resistance has revealed details of the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons programme in over 100 news conferences since 1991, including exposing crucial, secretive sites like Natanz and Arak in 2002.

Courageous Resistance Units have now revealed how the mullahs’ regime is planning to acquire more lands in Qom, 125 km south of Tehran, to secretly expand one of its nuclear facilities, according to a document published by “GhyamSarnegouni” (“Rise to Overthrow” in Farsi), a group of Iranian dissidents working with the Resistance Units, that managed to breach the servers of the regime’s presidency on May 29 and gain access to a trove of classified documents and internal messages. The “top secret” documents (https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/nuclear/tehran-secretly-expanding-fordow-nuclear-site-leaked-documents-reveal/) confirm that, unlike Tehran’s repeated denial of expanding its nuclear weapons programme, the regime continues to allocate resources to this effort.  One letter calls on the governor of Qom to hand over 1,162,308 square meters of the national territories of registered land “for the development of Martyr Alimohammadi Enrichment Complex.” The Martyr Alimohammadi Enrichment complex is the infamous “Fordow” uranium enrichment complex that was first exposed by the NCRI. The newly leaked documents once again confirm the Iranian Resistance’s warnings for the past four decades that the ruling theocracy is deceiving the international community to secretly advance its nuclear weapons program at the cost of the people’s worsening economic situation.

It is now clear that a nuclear armed Iran would be a terrifying threat to peace in the Middle East and worldwide. The UNSC must abandon its derisory attempts to appease the mullahs and take decisive action to prevent a nuclear war. After the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash on 19 May, the UNSC in New York shamefully offered their condolences and held a one-minute silence. Raisi was known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ for his role as an executioner of tens of thousands of political prisoners. Nevertheless, the UN HQ in Geneva disgracefully flew their flag at half-mast in his honour and in an outrageous affront to the Butcher’s victims, the UN General Assembly held a memorial service on 30^th May.

The EU has spent decades bending over backwards to appease the mullahs while they have sponsored conflict across the Middle East and terrorism worldwide, even almost certainly being behind the attempted assassination of a former Vice President of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal Quadras, last November in Madrid. The time for diplomacy and dialogue with this gangster regime is surely over.

(983 Words)

STRUAN STEVENSON

Struan Stevenson is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.