Iran's president on Wednesday warned Western states against rebuking Tehran at the International Atomic Energy Agency after its latest reports criticized his country, while the top US diplomat said time was running out to revive a nuclear deal with world powers.
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The IAEA on Tuesday criticized Iran for stonewalling an investigation into past activities and jeopardizing important monitoring work, possibly complicating efforts to resume talks on the Iran nuclear deal.
The IAEA said in reports to member states that there had been no progress on two central issues: explaining uranium traces found at several old, undeclared sites and getting urgent access to some monitoring equipment so that the IAEA can continue to keep track of parts of Iran's nuclear program.
"In the event of a counterproductive approach at the IAEA, it would not make sense to expect Iran to react constructively. Counterproductive measures are naturally disruptive to the negotiation path also," Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a phone call with European Council President Charles Michel, according to Iranian state media.
"The [IAEA's] confidence that it can maintain continuity of knowledge is declining over time and has now significantly further declined," one of the two reports said, adding that while the agency needs to access the equipment every three months, it had not had access since May 25.
"This confidence will continue to decline unless the situation is immediately rectified by Iran."
The second of the reports said, "The Director-General [Rafael Mariano Grossi] is increasingly concerned that even after some two years the safeguards issues outlined above in relation to the four locations in Iran not declared to the Agency remain unresolved."
It said Iran must resolve outstanding issues relating to the sites, which include questions about a fourth location the IAEA has not inspected, "without further delay."
Tuesday's criticism by the IAEA means the United States and its European allies must now decide whether to push for a resolution at next week's meeting of the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors pressuring Iran to yield.
In 2018, in the wake of ongoing Iranian belligerence in the region and having deemed the original nuclear deal to be significantly flawed, then-US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 deal, under which Iran had agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
The Islamic republic responded to the Trump administration's withdrawal and reimposition of sanctions by violating many of those restrictions.
Indirect talks between US President Joe Biden's administration and Iran on how both countries could return to compliance with the deal have not resumed since Raisi, an anti-Western hardliner, took office on August 5. France and Germany have called on Iran to return soon and Raisi has said Tehran is prepared to but not under Western "pressure."
A resolution at the IAEA could make resuming talks on the deal harder, since Tehran usually bristles at such moves.
Speaking in Germany, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said time was running out for Iran to return to that accord.
"I'm not going to put a date on it but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance with the JCPOA (nuclear deal) does not reproduce the benefits that agreement achieved," he said.
"We've been very clear that the ability to rejoin the [deal], return to mutual compliance, is not indefinite," Blinken added.
Western diplomats have said that a decision on how to respond to the IAEA reports has yet to be reached.
"We find ourselves at a moment of discussing with all our partners in the agreement how to react to this," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said alongside Blinken.
Senior diplomats from France, Britain and Germany will meet on Friday in Paris with the US envoy on Iran to discuss the matter.
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