Iran Says Might Exit NPT, Expel IAEA Inspectors After EP’s Anti-IRG Vote

By Staff, Agencies

Iran said it can withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [NPT] and discharge the inspectors of the UN nuclear agency as countermeasures against the European Parliament’s call for designation of the Islamic Revolution Guard [IRG] as a terrorist organization.

The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted an amendment calling on the EU and its member states to include the IRG in their terror list. It also passed another resolution on Thursday, calling for more sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities and putting the IRG on the EU terrorist list over alleged human rights violations during the recent riots.

Speaking on the sidelines of a closed session of the parliament on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that “everything would be possible” if a number of European political leaders, whom he called “inexperienced in diplomacy”, do not change course and rectify their mistakes.

The top Iranian diplomat said that in his recent talks with some European Union’s senior officials, including EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, they reassured him that they do not seek to implement the “visceral decision” made by the European Parliament against the IRG.

For its part, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry also denounced the European Parliament’s move in a Sunday statement, saying Iran reserves the “legitimate and absolute right” to take a tit-for-tat response in the face of any move against its national security.

The ministry said the EU, while experiencing the lowest levels of unity and efficiency, proved that it is suffering from “miscalculation” and “identity crisis.”

The bloc has no free will and “has turned into a puppet of US state terrorism, the Zionist regime, and the hated, anti-national [Iranian] groups,” the statement added.

Unlike the US, the ministry argued, Europe has a territorial connection with the sensitive West Asia region. The Europeans would not have carried out such an illegal and unacceptable act, which runs counter to the UN Charter, if they had reviewed the experience of a similar action by the United States, it said.

The majority of Iranian lawmakers also censured the European Parliament’s “wrong” decision, which they said was politically motivated and based on false information and misjudgments.

It is clear that Iran’s enemies, having failed to spread insecurity inside the country, now resort to such baseless measures in an attempt to exert political and media pressure on the Islamic Republic, the MPs said.