Parliament to discuss future of Iran-IAEA cooperation

As Iran's Parliament (Majlis) prepares to discuss a recently-passed IAEA resolution against Tehran, uncertainty surrounds the future of the country's cooperation with the nuclear watchdog.

On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a new resolution, calling on Iran to halt the construction of its Fordo enrichment plant, located outside Tehran.

"Currently we don't see any reason to limit our cooperation with the agency," a leading member of the Iranian Parliament, Hossein Ebrahimi said on Saturday.

"We may, however, consider reducing our cooperation with the IAEA," the member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee added.

Another member of the commission expressed similar sentiments, saying that the Parliament may go as far as to "consider withdrawing from the NPT, in its first reaction to the illegal and politically-motivated resolution."

Furthermore, the Parliament "can prevent IAEA inspectors from entering the country,'' Mohammad Karamirad who represents the western Iranian city of Kermanshah added.

The resolution, which was drafted by the P5+1 and passed in a 25-3 vote with six abstentions, urges Iran to clarify what it calls the purpose and the chronology of the plant's construction. It also wants Iran to confirm it has no more hidden nuclear plants and no intentions whatsoever to build one.

Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, has warned that the resolution passed against the country's nuclear work will only introduce tension to the "spirit of cooperation."

"We expect the agency to play its essential role and facilitate technical cooperation … this environment of the agency should be depoliticized for we have to make sure that the agency will only focus on technical matters," he said on Friday.

The resolution comes while, the latest IAEA report confirmed the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran's first nuclear plant in Natanz. It also said that Iran had allowed the agency to carry out a full inspection of its under-construction Fordo uranium enrichment facility.

IAEA inspectors have twice inspected the Fordo enrichment facility, with IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei confirming that the inspectors found "nothing to worry about" regarding the site.