BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 17. There are no active surveillance cameras at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran's Isfahan Province to record activities under the agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency said, Trend reports.
The agency had to make a statement, since a previous statement by Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) caused a lot of stir in Iranian media.
Speaking to reporters on June 15, Kamalvandi first said that surveillance cameras have been installed at the Natanz nuclear facility, then went on to say that the cameras were re-installed at the Isfahan Centrifuge Production Center. The official didn't indicate that he brought up Natanz by mistake, so his words started to spread around.
The Natanz nuclear facility is one of the uranium enrichment facilities and is protected by 90-meter-thick concreting. Iran enriches uranium to 60 percent in this nuclear facility. Suspending the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program between Iran and the 5+1 group (the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany), Iran has suspended the operation of the International Atomic Energy Agency's surveillance cameras at Iran's nuclear facilities since 2020.
In January 2016, JCPOA was launched between Iran and the P5+1 group (US, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany) in connection with Iran's nuclear program. In May 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the deal and imposed sanctions on Iran in November of the same year. To preserve the agreements reached as part of the JCPOA, the European signatories of the deal started in January 2019 that a financial mechanism for maintaining trade with Iran called INSTEX was formed.
On May 8, 2019, Iran announced that it had ceased fulfilling its commitments regarding the sale of over 300 kilograms of uranium, as stated in the deal, basing its decision on the other signatories that have not fulfilled their obligations. On July 7, Iran announced that it will not be fulfilling its commitments regarding the enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent and the reconstruction of the Arak Heavy Water Reactor Facility as stated in the deal.
Iran announced that it will enrich uranium using next-generation centrifuges and will not mix it with the enriched uranium residues as part of the third step of reducing commitments in JCPOA on Sept.5. On Nov. 5, 2019, Iran announced that it took the fourth step in connection with reducing its commitments to the nuclear agreement. So, uranium gas is being pumped to the centrifuges at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant.
On Jan.2020, Iran took the last fifth step in reducing the number of its commitments within JCPOA.
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