IAEA inspectors depart Tehran

Al Jazeera :

A team of inspectors from the UN’s nuclear watchdog have left Iran, following Tehran’s decision to suspend cooperation with the organisation after its 12-day conflict with Israel and the United States.

In a statement posted on X on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its employees would return to its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi stressed “the crucial importance” of holding talks with Iran to resume its monitoring and verification work as soon as possible, the post added.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said it was not clear what proportion of the IAEA staff left the country.

“Based on the language used, it is not clear if all or some of them left Iran, but we understand that some of them are still here,” he said.

“What we know is that they did not fly out; this departure happened through land into Armenia yesterday or the day before,” he said.

“And then they went to Vienna,” Serdar said, adding that the development has started an era of “nuclear ambiguity” in Iran.

The inspectors stayed in the Iranian capital throughout the recent fighting, which started on 13 June when Israel targeted Iranian military sites and killed some of the country’s most senior commanders, top scientists, and a number of civilians.

The US later became involved in the conflict, dropping bunker buster bombs on nuclear facilities in Iran, in a mission the Trump administration claimed had significantly set back the country’s nuclear programme.

In the aftermath of the US and Israeli aerial attacks, Iran, which has said it is still committed to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but made painfully clear its burgeoning distrust of the IAEA.