In a post on his X account on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei wrote, “The #IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has transformed an institution whose authority rests on technical expertise, impartiality, and independence into a link in a chain connecting technical reporting to political justification, and political justification to war.”
When IAEA reports become raw material for threat narratives and for the construction of a political and legal case against a country, the line between technical oversight and laying the groundwork for military aggression becomes dangerously blurred, he added.
“This is not merely a matter of reputational harm to the Agency or its Director General. The IAEA’s most valuable asset - its credibility as an impartial and independent authority - is being squandered. Once that credibility is subordinated to political agendas, the Agency risks becoming an instrument for rationalizing and facilitating aggression,” Baghaei underlined.
That is a profound institutional failure. Worse, it has made the Agency complicit in the political preparation of an unlawful war of choice—one waged in furtherance of the interests and ambitions of a genocidal regime that remains the only obstacle to a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
An institution entrusted with contributing to international peace and security should never become part of the machinery used to manufacture a pretext for war, the foreign ministry spokesman continued.
“In assessing responsibility for military aggression and war crimes, accountability cannot be limited to those who issue the orders or physically carry out unlawful attacks,” he said, adding, “It must also extend to those who serve as the aggressors’ enablers and apologists, and whose conduct knowingly contributes to the political, legal, or evidentiary foundations on which aggression is justified.”
Those who choose to rationalize or legitimize aggression by presenting contested assessments as authoritative grounds for coercive action cannot wash their hands of the consequences, he concluded.
MNA