CAIRO, August 26. /TASS/. Israel and the United States are seeking access for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to Iranian nuclear facilities that were targeted during the war, but Tehran is not yet prepared to allow experts to inspect the sites, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has said.
"The IAEA is under pressure from Israel and the US, which are demanding inspections of our nuclear facilities to assess the damage caused. We are still in a state of war, and until the IAEA develops a protocol for inspecting sites that have come under attack, we cannot allow its specialists to access them," Eslami said, according to IRNA.
He noted that IAEA inspectors had visited several Iranian nuclear facilities that were not targeted during the past month as part of routine inspections. Eslami did not specify which facilities the inspectors had visited.
The United States and Israel went to war with Iran on February 28. In June, Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding providing for an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon. However, on July 8, the United States resumed large-scale strikes against Iran, accusing Tehran of violating agreements related to the Strait of Hormuz.
Among the Iranian nuclear facilities targeted by Israel and the United States was the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, which is being built in cooperation with Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom.