Tehran
\nA team of inspectors from the United Nations\u2019 nuclear watchdog have left Iran, following Tehran\u2019s decision to suspend cooperation with the organisation after the 12-day conflict with Israel and the United States.
\nIn a statement posted on X on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its employees would return to its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
\nIAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi stressed \u201cthe crucial importance\u201d of holding talks with Iran to resume its monitoring and verification work as soon as possible, the post added.
\nAl Jazeera\u2019s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said it was not clear what proportion of the IAEA staff left the country.
\n\u201cBased on the language used, it is not clear if all or some of them left Iran, but we understand that some of them are still here,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWhat we know is that they did not fly out; this departure happened through land into Armenia yesterday or the day before,\u201d he added.
\n\u201cAnd then they went to Vienna,\u201d Serdar said, adding that the development has started an era of \u201cnuclear ambiguity\u201d in Iran.
\nThe inspectors stayed in the Iranian capital throughout the recent fighting, which started on June 13 when Israel attacked Iranian military sites and killed a number of the country\u2019s most senior commanders, top scientists, and civilians.
\nThe US later became involved in the conflict, dropping bunker-buster bombs on nuclear facilities in Iran, in a mission the Trump administration claimed had significantly set back the country\u2019s nuclear programme.
\nSince the start of the conflict, Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes, but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.
\nOn Wednesday, Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the country to cut ties with the nuclear watchdog. A bill to suspend cooperation had already been passed in the Iranian parliament and approved by the country\u2019s Guardian Council.
\nGuardian Council spokesperson Hadi Tahan Nazif said the decision had been taken for the \u201cfull respect for the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran\u201d.
\nThe bill itself says the suspension \u201cwill remain in effect until certain conditions are met, including the guaranteed security of nuclear facilities and scientists\u201d, according to Iranian state television.
\nOn Monday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarily dismissed Grossi\u2019s request to visit nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the US.
\n\u201cGrossi\u2019s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,\u201d Araghchi said, adding that \u201cIran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.\u201d
\nThe US Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce called Iran\u2019s decision to suspend cooperation with the IAEA \u201cunacceptable\u201d, urging Tehran \u201cto reverse course and choose a path of peace and prosperity\u201d.
\n\u201cIran cannot and will not have a nuclear weapon,\u201d she reiterated.
\nTehran denies wanting to produce a nuclear bomb, reiterating for years that its nuclear programme is for civilian use only. Neither US intelligence nor Grossi said they had found any proof Tehran was building a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tehran A team of inspectors from the United Nations\u2019 nuclear watchdog have left Iran, following Tehran\u2019s decision to suspend cooperation with the organisation after the 12-day conflict with Israel and the United States. In a statement posted on X on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its employees would return to its headquarters …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83315,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83307\/revisions\/83315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}