Accelerating enrichment and disabling cameras.. How do Iranian experts see their country's escalation against the IAEA's decision?

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After days of threats and threats, Tehran, on Wednesday, pre-empted the decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors - which accuses it of not cooperating and refraining from providing an explanation for the presence of uranium traces in undeclared sites - to stop the work of two of the Agency's surveillance cameras in one of its nuclear facilities, and threatened to take further action.

While the decision of the Board of Governors called on Iran to hold further talks with the UN agency "without delay", Tehran condemned the decision, stressing its right to reconsider its policy towards the agency, and accused the latter of politicizing its nuclear file.

In this context, Reuters reported that it had seen a report submitted by the International Atomic Energy Agency to member states, declaring that it had verified that Iran had started installing a new set of advanced IR6 centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear plant.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on a visit to the Nuclear Industries Exhibition (Anatolia)

'Deliberate escalation'

Observers in Iran read their country's technical steps in response to the Western decision within the framework of the "deliberate escalation and political messages" that Tehran sends to both the UN agency and the parties participating in the Vienna negotiations that have been stalled since last March.

The researcher at the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies, Abbas Aslani, believes that passing the Western decision in the UN agency’s Board of Governors came as a response to the Vienna negotiations’ halting moving stagnant water, putting pressure on the Iranian side and urging it to make concessions and stop some of its demands in the talks.

Aslani explained, to Al-Jazeera Net, that the last quarterly report of the IAEA did not bring anything new;

The agency had previously announced in 2011 that it had found atoms of modified uranium, and that Tehran had provided clarifications to its questions before and after the signing of the 2015 nuclear agreement, and the file was previously closed.

The Iranian researcher considered the report of the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, "politicized and biased," describing his recent visit to Tel Aviv as an indication of the political pressures that the IAEA is exposed to.

Possible responses

Aslani described the decision of the Board of Governors as "disappointing" for Tehran, "which has credibly cooperated with the UN agency over the past years," and said that the Iranian response to the Western decision will take political and technical dimensions, and Tehran has begun to abandon the implementation of steps that do not fall within its commitments to an agreement. Comprehensive safeguards signed with the IAEA.

The researcher explained that Iran may continue its technical steps by stopping more surveillance cameras from working in its nuclear facilities, restricting the work of the Atomic Agency in them, and installing new sets of advanced centrifuges, in addition to political responses that would complicate the Vienna nuclear negotiations.

But he ruled out that the Iranian response would fire a mercy bullet against the nuclear agreement.

The Western decision, as well as the Iranian response to it, practically placed the nuclear file in a spiral of escalation, and complicated the nuclear negotiations more than they were, according to Aslani.

However, he added that the return of the Iranian nuclear file to the IAEA Board of Governors would constitute a starting point for engaging in serious negotiations to prevent referring the file to the Security Council and avoid confrontation, by reviving the nuclear agreement.

Majid Zouari says that Iran is pursuing a deliberate escalation in response to the decision of the IAEA governors (Al-Jazeera)

excluded withdrawal

For his part, Director of the Institute of International Relations Majid Zouari suggested that Tehran would take a "deliberate escalation" in response to the decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, "to reprimand the agency, which did not take the great Iranian cooperation with it into account, on the one hand, and urged the American side to show greater flexibility." On the other hand, in indirect negotiations through mediators.

And Zuari - in his speech to Al Jazeera Net - referred to the calls of some Iranian circles to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and to raise the rate of uranium enrichment to 90%, ruling out that his country, in the current circumstances, would take such steps, provided that it remains within the framework of the possibilities contained in the event. Permanently eliminating the nuclear agreement, referring its file to the Security Council, and reinstating UN sanctions on Iran.

He pointed out that Tehran mediates many nuclear powers in the region, starting with India and Pakistan in the east, to Russia in the north, and then the "Zionist entity" in the west, in addition to some reports that talk about the existence of nuclear programs in some neighboring countries to the south.

Zouari expressed his belief that his country has the right to become a nuclear power in the event that the Western side does not want to resolve its nuclear file and does not lift sanctions against it.

The director of the Institute of International Relations concluded that the continuing tension between the eastern and western powers, especially the developments of the Russian war on Ukraine and the energy and food crises, will push the western side to avoid further escalatory steps.

He said that the Iranian and American sides need to revive the nuclear agreement, and they may eventually return to the negotiating table after months of escalation and corresponding escalation.