A speech by Mohammad Eslami, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief and vice president, at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference was scrapped. Eslami was scheduled to attend the annual conference at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and give a speech, but reports said Austria denied him entry at the strong urging of the United States.
On the 14th, local time, Bloomberg and other outlets reported that Eslami did not attend the IAEA. The planned speech also fell through. Iran's Mehr News Agency earlier reported that Eslami had departed Tehran to attend this annual conference, but it appears he was unable to enter Austria.
According to Bloomberg, a U.S. official said Austria's government denied Eslami entry because he is subject to United Nations sanctions. The official added that Austria asked the U.N. Sanctions Committee to grant an entry waiver for Eslami, but the bid collapsed under strong U.S. pressure.
This is seen as stemming from concern that temporarily exempting U.N. sanctions to allow Eslami to attend and speak at the IAEA General Conference could be viewed as conferring legitimacy on Iran's nuclear development and its regime.
France, the United Kingdom, and Germany—the three European countries that concluded the 20115 nuclear deal (JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran—determined that Iran intentionally violated the accord and in September last year triggered the "snapback" process to restore U.N. sanctions. As a result, a travel ban sanction was imposed on Eslami.
Meanwhile, at the IAEA annual conference being held from today through the 18th, issues related to safeguards in the Middle East are slated for discussion. From the United States, Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to attend the IAEA conference and emphasize the need to halt Iran's nuclear program, ban the possession of nuclear weapons, and resume IAEA inspectors' examinations of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Amid this, attention is also on whether Saudi Arabia, which concluded a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in July, will go so far as to discuss accepting the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) and the Additional Protocol (AP) with the IAEA, areas in which it had been passive.