Russia Urges IAEA for Unbiased Assessment of Attack on Iran's Darkhovin Nuclear Plant

MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. Moscow hopes that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will give an unbiased assessment of the attack on the Darkhovin Nuclear Power Plant in Iran, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"We assume that the IAEA leadership has taken note of what happened and will provide an impartial assessment of the incident, including from the perspective of the direct damage caused to the Agency’s verification activities, which have once again been undermined in the most brazen and inexcusable manner," she said in a commentary posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel.

According to Zakharova, any attempts to "use this situation to hype up imaginary threats, allegedly linked to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, are nothing more than a banal pretext for unacceptable plans to unleash yet another bloodshed in Iran, which will inevitably have negative consequences not only for the already destabilized Middle East, but also for the entire world."

"The exercise of the legitimate right of non-nuclear states, including Iran, to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, as committed to paper in the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons - TASS), must not be called into question or subjected to external pressure," she continued. "We expect that the agency, whose authority and reputation have been put at stake by those who are targeting and striking nuclear facilities in Iran, will take immediate and concrete steps to end such lawlessness."

Russia’s reaction

The Russian diplomat noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry "has taken note of media reports" about the attack. "This raises serious concerns both in terms of the nuclear safety of this facility, which, as is well known, is under IAEA safeguards, and in terms of the increasingly threatening overall situation surrounding Iran, which has effectively nullified previous multilateral efforts to resolve the crisis caused by the US-Israeli aggression against Iran," she stressed.

According to her, "what deserves the strongest condemnation is the cynical ease with which attackers include nuclear facilities on their lists of targets for military strikes, in defiance of international law, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which have unequivocally slammed such acts as unacceptable, and in direct contravention of IAEA norms and guidelines."

"Obviously, the aggressors’ repeated statements about their commitment to relevant obligations, their desire to uphold globally agreed approaches to nuclear non-proliferation and to ensure nuclear security and physical nuclear safety, and to provide due support for the Agency’s fulfillment of its statutory functions, are nothing but empty words. Their actual actions prove the opposite," Zakharova added.

The Darkhovin nuclear plant, which is under construction in southwestern Iran, was struck by the United States overnight to July 19, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said. The IAEA said it is investigating reports about this attack, noting that the facility is at an early stage of construction and "contained no nuclear material when last visited by the IAEA."