U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley visited the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog Wednesday, voicing U.S. concerns about Iran’s compliance with the controversial Obama-era nuclear deal — just as the Trump administration is investigating whether to declare the Islamic regime in compliance with the deal in October.
Haley traveled to Geneva to meet with officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — the agency tasked with monitoring Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). A spokesperson for the U.S. mission told Breitbart News that the trip is part of a larger strategy by the administration to gather more information about Iran’s activities and that it was primarily a fact-finding mission.
Haley met with Iran safeguards experts and also Director General Yukiya Amanda, where her office said she praised the IAEA’s works but also “discussed U.S. concerns about ensuring Iran strictly adheres to its obligations, noting that IAEA reports can only be as good as the access Iran grants to any facility the IAEA suspects of having a nuclear role.”
Haley’s office said she also brought up the importance of stopping Iran from exploiting “ambiguous language” in the deal, as well as IAEA’s access to facilities in the Islamic Republic.
The Trump administration declared Iran in compliance in July but did so reluctantly. President Trump has indicated that he will not do so when the matter comes up again in October. Trump has consistently expressed skepticism over the deal, pledged to get the U.S. out of it during the campaign and has described it as “the worst deal ever negotiated.”
This month Haley and three European allies wrote to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warning the U.N. not to back down in the face of increased Iranian aggression in the wake of a rocket that could be converted into a ballistic missile.
The letter said the move was “inconsistent” with U.N. Security Resolution 2231, which enshrined the Iran deal. In an additional statement to the Security Council, Haley gave a stark warning:
“As long as we allow the Iranian regime to violate this Council’s prohibitions with impunity, it will be a source of weapons to terrorist groups that will only grow in volume and destructive capability. The United States will continue to raise this issue of Iranian non-compliance with international obligations at every opportunity,” she said.
The U.S. later imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Iran, causing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to warn that the regime could quit the deal “within hours” if the U.S. kept hitting them with sanctions.
This week, Iran’s head of atomic energy warned that it could resume enriching uranium within five days if it wanted to.
“Definitely, we are not interested in such a thing happening,” Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi claimed. “We have not achieved the deal easily to let it go easily. We are committed to the deal and we are loyal to it.”
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.
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