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Iran Finds Itself in Crosshairs of Arab Protesters
Sune Engel Rasmussen in Erbil, Iraq, Ghassan Adnan in Baghdad and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut
11-14 minutes
The largest mass protests to hit Iraq and Lebanon in decades are posing a direct challenge to the influence Iran has gained in both countries as demonstrators seek to overturn the political order.
Late Sunday, protesters in the holy Shiite city of Karbala torched the Iranian consulate with Molotov cocktails, hauling an Iraqi flag up on the compound walls. Security forces killed three people when dispersing the crowd with live ammunition, according to Iraq’s human-rights commission.
Over the past decade, Iran has leveraged instability in the Middle East to expand its footprint in the region. But as paramilitary groups backed by the Islamic Republic have gained political clout, protesters are holding Tehran and its local allies just as accountable as their own political classes for poor governance and state violence.
“Tehran used to benefit from the perception that its rivals were the corrupt, ineffective ones,” said Emile Hokayem, Middle East analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But as Iran’s partners gain power, they can’t escape the fact that they now have responsibility for their countries’ well-being.”
In Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, protesters have chanted “Iran out, out;” torn down billboards emblazoned with Iranian leaders; and thrown shoes—a severe insult in Muslim culture—at pictures of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most famous commander and a frequent presence in Iraq.
Lebanese riot-police officers removed protesters as they dismantled a roadblock in Beirut on Oct. 31. Photo: patrick baz/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Protesters have continued with undiminished force, even after unseating the Lebanese prime minister and pushing Iraq’s leader to the brink of resignation. In Lebanon, huge crowds returned to the streets over the weekend, after a brief lull that followed last week’s resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
The protests, which have galvanized support across sectarian lines, have targeted a broad host of issues but anti-Iranian sentiments have been one focal point for popular anger, especially in Iraq’s south. Many protesters blame their country’s decrepit public services, dismal economic growth and corruption on a political leadership that they think is too often beholden to Tehran.
In Lebanon, protesters are demanding sweeping changes to a political system that has entrenched sectarianism—and foreign influence. The top three positions—president, prime minister and speaker—are divided equally among Christians, Sunnis and Shiites. Hezbollah, a Shiite military and political group that is Iran’s closest regional partner, commands a large share of the Shiite vote because of the sectarian political system, as well as its role in defending Lebanon against Israel and the Sunni extremists of Islamic State.
In Iraq, a common target for protesters have been the Shiite militias, many of them backed by Iran, that translated their battlefield gains against Islamic State into political power. Known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, they formally answer to the state but operate with a large degree of impunity, giving Tehran a channel of influence. That power and territorial control have allowed the militias to emerge as a potent economic force, profiting off everything from taxation to its growing grip over state construction companies, as well as, according to the U.S., helping Iran evade sanctions.
Protesters in Lebanon Celebrate Prime Minister Hariri’s Resignation
0:00 / 1:34
Protesters in Lebanon Celebrate Prime Minister Hariri’s Resignation
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned after nearly two weeks of mass protests across the country. From the streets of Beirut, WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum explains why Mr. Hariri stepped down and what his resignation could mean for the Middle East. Photo: Dion Nissenbaum/The Wall Street Journal
Tehran appears to view the protests with concern, comparing the Arab protests with past unrest at home that it forcefully suppressed. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last week accused the U.S., Israel and other Western countries of fomenting the revolts in Iraq and Lebanon.
“The enemies engaged in the same plots against Iran, but fortunately, people acted in a timely manner, and the sedition was nullified,” Mr. Khamenei said. Iranian officials use “sedition” to describe large domestic protests, in particular the 2009 Green Movement.
Iran hasn’t been the only country to be the target of popular anger. Protesters in Baghdad have burned American and Israeli flags, as well as those of Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party. “The ire seems primarily geared towards the respective ruling elites,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, a researcher of Iran-Iraq relations at SOAS University of London. “The U.S.—and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia—for instance, have little to cheer about since they have fingers in the pie, too.”
Still, Iran has borne the brunt of public anger.
Protesters chanted slogans and held a placard with Arabic that reads “Iran out, all Islamic parties I want my right" in Basra, Iraq, on Oct. 25. Photo: Nabil al-Jurani/Associated Press
Protesters have burned offices of Tehran-backed paramilitary groups in southern Iraq. In Amarah, a mob of protesters pulled an injured commander of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia out of an ambulance and killed him, according to the militia. Video on social media showed the final moments of the murder.
As the unrest has intensified, Tehran has moved to protect its political allies. After Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, offered to resign, Mr. Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force, intervened to keep him in office, according to two people familiar with the secret meetings.
During a four-day visit to Baghdad, Mr. Soleimani asked the leaders of the two largest political blocs who had called for the prime minister’s ouster—Hadi al-Ameri and Moqtada al-Sadr—to continue supporting the prime minister, these people said. On Sunday, Mr. Abdul-Mahdi called for the country to return to normal without mentioning his previous offer to resign.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard couldn’t be reached for comment, but a government official said: “There are objectives behind such reports to make it look like Iran is telling Iraq what to do.” He said that although some anti-Iranian sentiments in Iraq was only natural, “it is being exaggerated to insinuate that Iran is a detested player in Iraq.”
Sabah al-Ogaili, a parliamentarian from Mr. Sadr’s bloc denied any deal to keep the prime minister in place, calling the claim “nonsense.”
Meanwhile, Tehran-backed paramilitary groups have targeted what they see as sources of the unrest. The Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella of Iraqi paramilitary groups, many of them backed by Iran, has been accused by Human Rights Watch of firing live shots at protesters, albeit sometimes to defend their offices.
Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force, intervened to prevent Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi from being ousted. Photo: iranian supreme leader/epa/Shutterstock
The PMF is also accused by Amnesty International of intimidating and abducting protesters. On Oct. 8, Ali Jaseb Hattab, a lawyer who had used Facebook to accuse a local Iranian-backed militia of killing protesters, was kidnapped in the southern city of Amarah, his family said.
After being lured to a street after dark, purportedly to meet a client, Mr. Hattab was accosted by men and bundled into a car, according to his brother Mustafa, who provided surveillance video of the abduction to The Wall Street Journal. The family said Mr. Hattab had received threats telling him to stop making the accusations before his disappearance. It declined to name the responsible group for security reasons. Mr. Hattab is still missing.
Some influential Iraqi officials have urged Iran to stay out of its internal affairs. Iraq’s top Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Friday warned that “no international or regional party” should interfere with the will of the Iraqi people.
Iraqi women chanted slogans and waved national flags at a protest in Baghdad's Tahrir square on Monday. Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Opposition to Tehran has been largely absent from Lebanon’s rallies, but criticism of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political group backed by Iran, has been unusually vocal. On Oct. 19, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters attacked protesters in Tyre and Nabatieh in south Lebanon, the group’s heartland.
Echoing Iranian leaders, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has called Lebanon’s protests a foreign plot against the “axis of resistance,” a term for an anti-Western and anti-Israel alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Last week, supporters of Hezbollah and the Shiite Amal party rampaged through downtown Beirut, attacking protesters with metal pipes and wooden sticks and burning their tents. Afterward, bruised protesters sat shaking on the sidewalks, one man crying that the army had stood by as the vigilantes beat them.
“Even [Hezbollah’s] leader admits that they are the soldiers of Iran,” said Mohammad Abouzeid, who lives in southern Lebanon and witnessed Hezbollah attacking protesters in Tyre. “They only have foreign interests and agendas.”
Corrections & Amplifications
Mass protests hit Iraq and Lebanon. An earlier web summary for this article incorrectly stated the protests were in Iran and Lebanon. (Nov. 5, 2019)
—Aresu Eqbali in Tehran contributed to this article.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Iran Finds Itself in Crosshairs of Arab Protesters
Sune Engel Rasmussen in Erbil, Iraq, Ghassan Adnan in Baghdad and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut
11-14 minutes
The largest mass protests to hit Iraq and Lebanon in decades are posing a direct challenge to the influence Iran has gained in both countries as demonstrators seek to overturn the political order.
Late Sunday, protesters in the holy Shiite city of Karbala torched the Iranian consulate with Molotov cocktails, hauling an Iraqi flag up on the compound walls. Security forces killed three people when dispersing the crowd with live ammunition, according to Iraq’s human-rights commission.
Over the past decade, Iran has leveraged instability in the Middle East to expand its footprint in the region. But as paramilitary groups backed by the Islamic Republic have gained political clout, protesters are holding Tehran and its local allies just as accountable as their own political classes for poor governance and state violence.
“Tehran used to benefit from the perception that its rivals were the corrupt, ineffective ones,” said Emile Hokayem, Middle East analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But as Iran’s partners gain power, they can’t escape the fact that they now have responsibility for their countries’ well-being.”
In Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, protesters have chanted “Iran out, out;” torn down billboards emblazoned with Iranian leaders; and thrown shoes—a severe insult in Muslim culture—at pictures of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most famous commander and a frequent presence in Iraq.
Lebanese riot-police officers removed protesters as they dismantled a roadblock in Beirut on Oct. 31. Photo: patrick baz/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Protesters have continued with undiminished force, even after unseating the Lebanese prime minister and pushing Iraq’s leader to the brink of resignation. In Lebanon, huge crowds returned to the streets over the weekend, after a brief lull that followed last week’s resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
The protests, which have galvanized support across sectarian lines, have targeted a broad host of issues but anti-Iranian sentiments have been one focal point for popular anger, especially in Iraq’s south. Many protesters blame their country’s decrepit public services, dismal economic growth and corruption on a political leadership that they think is too often beholden to Tehran.
In Lebanon, protesters are demanding sweeping changes to a political system that has entrenched sectarianism—and foreign influence. The top three positions—president, prime minister and speaker—are divided equally among Christians, Sunnis and Shiites. Hezbollah, a Shiite military and political group that is Iran’s closest regional partner, commands a large share of the Shiite vote because of the sectarian political system, as well as its role in defending Lebanon against Israel and the Sunni extremists of Islamic State.
In Iraq, a common target for protesters have been the Shiite militias, many of them backed by Iran, that translated their battlefield gains against Islamic State into political power. Known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, they formally answer to the state but operate with a large degree of impunity, giving Tehran a channel of influence. That power and territorial control have allowed the militias to emerge as a potent economic force, profiting off everything from taxation to its growing grip over state construction companies, as well as, according to the U.S., helping Iran evade sanctions.
Protesters in Lebanon Celebrate Prime Minister Hariri’s Resignation
0:00 / 1:34
Protesters in Lebanon Celebrate Prime Minister Hariri’s Resignation
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned after nearly two weeks of mass protests across the country. From the streets of Beirut, WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum explains why Mr. Hariri stepped down and what his resignation could mean for the Middle East. Photo: Dion Nissenbaum/The Wall Street Journal
Tehran appears to view the protests with concern, comparing the Arab protests with past unrest at home that it forcefully suppressed. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last week accused the U.S., Israel and other Western countries of fomenting the revolts in Iraq and Lebanon.
“The enemies engaged in the same plots against Iran, but fortunately, people acted in a timely manner, and the sedition was nullified,” Mr. Khamenei said. Iranian officials use “sedition” to describe large domestic protests, in particular the 2009 Green Movement.
Iran hasn’t been the only country to be the target of popular anger. Protesters in Baghdad have burned American and Israeli flags, as well as those of Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party. “The ire seems primarily geared towards the respective ruling elites,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, a researcher of Iran-Iraq relations at SOAS University of London. “The U.S.—and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia—for instance, have little to cheer about since they have fingers in the pie, too.”
Still, Iran has borne the brunt of public anger.
Protesters chanted slogans and held a placard with Arabic that reads “Iran out, all Islamic parties I want my right" in Basra, Iraq, on Oct. 25. Photo: Nabil al-Jurani/Associated Press
Protesters have burned offices of Tehran-backed paramilitary groups in southern Iraq. In Amarah, a mob of protesters pulled an injured commander of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia out of an ambulance and killed him, according to the militia. Video on social media showed the final moments of the murder.
As the unrest has intensified, Tehran has moved to protect its political allies. After Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, offered to resign, Mr. Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force, intervened to keep him in office, according to two people familiar with the secret meetings.
During a four-day visit to Baghdad, Mr. Soleimani asked the leaders of the two largest political blocs who had called for the prime minister’s ouster—Hadi al-Ameri and Moqtada al-Sadr—to continue supporting the prime minister, these people said. On Sunday, Mr. Abdul-Mahdi called for the country to return to normal without mentioning his previous offer to resign.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard couldn’t be reached for comment, but a government official said: “There are objectives behind such reports to make it look like Iran is telling Iraq what to do.” He said that although some anti-Iranian sentiments in Iraq was only natural, “it is being exaggerated to insinuate that Iran is a detested player in Iraq.”
Sabah al-Ogaili, a parliamentarian from Mr. Sadr’s bloc denied any deal to keep the prime minister in place, calling the claim “nonsense.”
Meanwhile, Tehran-backed paramilitary groups have targeted what they see as sources of the unrest. The Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella of Iraqi paramilitary groups, many of them backed by Iran, has been accused by Human Rights Watch of firing live shots at protesters, albeit sometimes to defend their offices.
Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force, intervened to prevent Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi from being ousted. Photo: iranian supreme leader/epa/Shutterstock
The PMF is also accused by Amnesty International of intimidating and abducting protesters. On Oct. 8, Ali Jaseb Hattab, a lawyer who had used Facebook to accuse a local Iranian-backed militia of killing protesters, was kidnapped in the southern city of Amarah, his family said.
After being lured to a street after dark, purportedly to meet a client, Mr. Hattab was accosted by men and bundled into a car, according to his brother Mustafa, who provided surveillance video of the abduction to The Wall Street Journal. The family said Mr. Hattab had received threats telling him to stop making the accusations before his disappearance. It declined to name the responsible group for security reasons. Mr. Hattab is still missing.
Some influential Iraqi officials have urged Iran to stay out of its internal affairs. Iraq’s top Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Friday warned that “no international or regional party” should interfere with the will of the Iraqi people.
Iraqi women chanted slogans and waved national flags at a protest in Baghdad's Tahrir square on Monday. Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Opposition to Tehran has been largely absent from Lebanon’s rallies, but criticism of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political group backed by Iran, has been unusually vocal. On Oct. 19, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters attacked protesters in Tyre and Nabatieh in south Lebanon, the group’s heartland.
Echoing Iranian leaders, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has called Lebanon’s protests a foreign plot against the “axis of resistance,” a term for an anti-Western and anti-Israel alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Last week, supporters of Hezbollah and the Shiite Amal party rampaged through downtown Beirut, attacking protesters with metal pipes and wooden sticks and burning their tents. Afterward, bruised protesters sat shaking on the sidewalks, one man crying that the army had stood by as the vigilantes beat them.
“Even [Hezbollah’s] leader admits that they are the soldiers of Iran,” said Mohammad Abouzeid, who lives in southern Lebanon and witnessed Hezbollah attacking protesters in Tyre. “They only have foreign interests and agendas.”
Corrections & Amplifications
Mass protests hit Iraq and Lebanon. An earlier web summary for this article incorrectly stated the protests were in Iran and Lebanon. (Nov. 5, 2019)
—Aresu Eqbali in Tehran contributed to this article.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
wsj.com
U.S. Accuses Iran of Intimidating U.N. Nuclear Agency Inspectors
Laurence Norman
7-8 minutes
The U.S. accused Iran of intimidating nuclear inspectors after a woman from the United Nations atomic agency was blocked from entering the country’s main enrichment site and briefly stopped from leaving the country, as tensions mounted over the 2015 nuclear deal.
Western diplomats said on Thursday that the inspector had been held by Iranian authorities last week and her papers confiscated after she had been prevented from entering Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz, some 180 miles south of Tehran.
The U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jackie Wolcott, called the move an “outrageous provocation” and harassment of the agency’s monitoring work.
Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA Kazem Gharib Abadi said that the inspector had been stopped from entering the Natanz nuclear facility after an alarm went off at the entrance, which includes equipment to detect traces of nitrate explosives. He said the procedure was repeated several times and the alarm went off again.
The incident is the first flare-up between Iran and the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, since it was implemented in January 2016. Before the deal, Iran repeatedly denied IAEA inspectors access to sites and accused the agency of sending in spies.
The friction comes after Iran announced fresh steps Tuesday to step away from the accord’s limits in response to harsh U.S. sanctions. Those actions and the new concerns raised by the IAEA about Iran’s behavior are increasing calls from the U.S. and Israel to tighten pressure on Iran.
Iran “is positioning itself for a rapid nuclear breakout,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter Thursday following Iran’s announcement this week that it was resuming enriching uranium at its underground nuclear plant at Fordow, near Iran’s holy city of Qom. “It is now time for all nations to reject its nuclear extortion and increase pressure.”
The IAEA called the detention of the inspector unacceptable and said it disagreed with Iran’s characterization of the incident. The agency said it had ordered the inspector to leave the country after she was blocked from entering Natanz. It declined to go into further detail. The inspector has now returned home, according to U.S. officials.
The agency reported on the incident involving the inspector at a meeting of its board on Thursday, where the IAEA also put pressure on Iran over the presence of undeclared nuclear material at Turquz Abad, a now-dismantled site in the capital Tehran. The IAEA took samples at the site earlier this year and found radioactive traces, including uranium. Under international nonproliferation rules, Iran must declare and account for such material.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Iran was stymying the IAEA probe into the radioactive material found at the at Turquz Abad, which was first revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018. Western diplomats have backed up as likely Mr. Netanyahu’s charge that the site was likely used to store Iranian equipment from the country’s past nuclear work, which western countries believe was aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear program is purely for peaceful civilian process. It has also said it is complying with the IAEA’s probe.
“Iran is cooperating with the Agency…We always engage constructively to address possible issues or questions, and this is an ongoing and continuing process with no special immediacy or concern attached,” Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Mr. Gharib Abadi wrote on Twitter.
A U.S. official said the agency had told member states this week that Iran’s responses to its questions about the uranium, which isn’t in a form that can be directly used for a nuclear weapon, had been inadequate and inconsistent with what the agency found.
What Iran’s Breaches of the Nuclear Deal Mean for the U.S. and Europe
0:00 / 5:05
What Iran’s Breaches of the Nuclear Deal Mean for the U.S. and Europe
Tehran said it would begin enriching uranium beyond the 3.67% limit set in a 2015 nuclear deal. The WSJ explains the significance of the violation and what's next. Photo: Iranian presidency office/EPA/Shutterstock
At the heart of the matter are questions about Iran’s past nuclear work. Israel and the U.S. say that, despite past investigations, Iran needs to be probed further, to get a better picture of how advanced Iran’s knowledge is about building a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Netanyahu said last year that the uncovering of the Turquz Abad site and a nuclear archive Israel extracted from Iran a few months earlier, provided evidence that Iran plans to develop nuclear weapons and is just waiting for key limits in the nuclear accord to expire before it resumes that work.
In a briefing Thursday, Israeli intelligence and security officials said the IAEA’s briefing to member states on Turquz Abad demonstrated that Tehran was flouting global nonproliferation rules.
The officials said they hope IAEA’s confirmation of Israel’s findings will galvanize the international community and particularly the United Kingdom, Germany and France to join a U.S. campaign to exert economic pressure on Iran to bring it back to the negotiating table and agree a stricter deal.
“It’s time to snap back sanctions,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Europe must stop stalling.”
European countries say they are trying to save the nuclear deal and have so far chosen not to trigger a dispute mechanism which could lead to the reimposition of international sanctions on Iran and unravel the deal, despite Tehran’s moves to step back from its commitments under the accord. They have criticized the U.S. move to quit the deal and slap sanctions on Iran and privately many European diplomats say they blame Washington for driving Iran to escalate its nuclear program.
The Russian ambassador to the IAEA played down the significance of the Turquz Abad issue and said the board meeting Thursday was unnecessary. “In fact no emergency, nothing extraordinary in the field. Just uncertainty regarding some events which took place decades ago,” said Mikhail Ulyanov.
—Felicia Schwartz in Jerusalem contributed to this article.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
U.S. Accuses Iran of Intimidating U.N. Nuclear Agency Inspectors
Laurence Norman
7-8 minutes
The U.S. accused Iran of intimidating nuclear inspectors after a woman from the United Nations atomic agency was blocked from entering the country’s main enrichment site and briefly stopped from leaving the country, as tensions mounted over the 2015 nuclear deal.
Western diplomats said on Thursday that the inspector had been held by Iranian authorities last week and her papers confiscated after she had been prevented from entering Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz, some 180 miles south of Tehran.
The U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jackie Wolcott, called the move an “outrageous provocation” and harassment of the agency’s monitoring work.
Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA Kazem Gharib Abadi said that the inspector had been stopped from entering the Natanz nuclear facility after an alarm went off at the entrance, which includes equipment to detect traces of nitrate explosives. He said the procedure was repeated several times and the alarm went off again.
The incident is the first flare-up between Iran and the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, since it was implemented in January 2016. Before the deal, Iran repeatedly denied IAEA inspectors access to sites and accused the agency of sending in spies.
The friction comes after Iran announced fresh steps Tuesday to step away from the accord’s limits in response to harsh U.S. sanctions. Those actions and the new concerns raised by the IAEA about Iran’s behavior are increasing calls from the U.S. and Israel to tighten pressure on Iran.
Iran “is positioning itself for a rapid nuclear breakout,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter Thursday following Iran’s announcement this week that it was resuming enriching uranium at its underground nuclear plant at Fordow, near Iran’s holy city of Qom. “It is now time for all nations to reject its nuclear extortion and increase pressure.”
The IAEA called the detention of the inspector unacceptable and said it disagreed with Iran’s characterization of the incident. The agency said it had ordered the inspector to leave the country after she was blocked from entering Natanz. It declined to go into further detail. The inspector has now returned home, according to U.S. officials.
The agency reported on the incident involving the inspector at a meeting of its board on Thursday, where the IAEA also put pressure on Iran over the presence of undeclared nuclear material at Turquz Abad, a now-dismantled site in the capital Tehran. The IAEA took samples at the site earlier this year and found radioactive traces, including uranium. Under international nonproliferation rules, Iran must declare and account for such material.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Iran was stymying the IAEA probe into the radioactive material found at the at Turquz Abad, which was first revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018. Western diplomats have backed up as likely Mr. Netanyahu’s charge that the site was likely used to store Iranian equipment from the country’s past nuclear work, which western countries believe was aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear program is purely for peaceful civilian process. It has also said it is complying with the IAEA’s probe.
“Iran is cooperating with the Agency…We always engage constructively to address possible issues or questions, and this is an ongoing and continuing process with no special immediacy or concern attached,” Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Mr. Gharib Abadi wrote on Twitter.
A U.S. official said the agency had told member states this week that Iran’s responses to its questions about the uranium, which isn’t in a form that can be directly used for a nuclear weapon, had been inadequate and inconsistent with what the agency found.
What Iran’s Breaches of the Nuclear Deal Mean for the U.S. and Europe
0:00 / 5:05
What Iran’s Breaches of the Nuclear Deal Mean for the U.S. and Europe
Tehran said it would begin enriching uranium beyond the 3.67% limit set in a 2015 nuclear deal. The WSJ explains the significance of the violation and what's next. Photo: Iranian presidency office/EPA/Shutterstock
At the heart of the matter are questions about Iran’s past nuclear work. Israel and the U.S. say that, despite past investigations, Iran needs to be probed further, to get a better picture of how advanced Iran’s knowledge is about building a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Netanyahu said last year that the uncovering of the Turquz Abad site and a nuclear archive Israel extracted from Iran a few months earlier, provided evidence that Iran plans to develop nuclear weapons and is just waiting for key limits in the nuclear accord to expire before it resumes that work.
In a briefing Thursday, Israeli intelligence and security officials said the IAEA’s briefing to member states on Turquz Abad demonstrated that Tehran was flouting global nonproliferation rules.
The officials said they hope IAEA’s confirmation of Israel’s findings will galvanize the international community and particularly the United Kingdom, Germany and France to join a U.S. campaign to exert economic pressure on Iran to bring it back to the negotiating table and agree a stricter deal.
“It’s time to snap back sanctions,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Europe must stop stalling.”
European countries say they are trying to save the nuclear deal and have so far chosen not to trigger a dispute mechanism which could lead to the reimposition of international sanctions on Iran and unravel the deal, despite Tehran’s moves to step back from its commitments under the accord. They have criticized the U.S. move to quit the deal and slap sanctions on Iran and privately many European diplomats say they blame Washington for driving Iran to escalate its nuclear program.
The Russian ambassador to the IAEA played down the significance of the Turquz Abad issue and said the board meeting Thursday was unnecessary. “In fact no emergency, nothing extraordinary in the field. Just uncertainty regarding some events which took place decades ago,” said Mikhail Ulyanov.
—Felicia Schwartz in Jerusalem contributed to this article.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
This is madness.
Trump needs to get ousted from the white house and someone competent needs to be put in immediately. This man is going to get us killed with his stupidity!
Iran nuclear deal: IAEA finds uranium particles at undeclared site
Israel's prime minister said last year that 15kg of radioactive material was removed from a site in Turquzabad
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found uranium particles at a site in Iran that had not been declared by the Iranian authorities.
A confidential report, seen by the BBC, did not say exactly where the site was. But inspectors are believed to have taken samples from a location in Tehran's Turquzabad district.
That is the area where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has alleged Iran had a "secret atomic warehouse".
Iran has not responded to the report.
But it has previously said the site was a carpet cleaning factory and served no clandestine purpose.
The IAEA's report also confirmed Iran had resumed uranium enrichment at its underground Fordo facility, breaching another commitment under its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Enriched uranium can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.
Three world powers party to the accord - France, the UK, and Germany - said they were "extremely concerned" by Iran's decision and warned that it made their efforts to defuse tensions in the region more difficult.
Inside Iran: Iranians on Trump and the nuclear deal
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week that it was responding to the sanctions that were reinstated by the US when President Donald Trump abandoned the deal last year and have caused its oil exports to collapse.
The 2015 deal saw Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, agree to limit its sensitive activities and allow in IAEA inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
Mr Trump wants to force Iran to negotiate a new agreement that would place indefinite curbs on its nuclear programme and also halt its development of ballistic missiles. But Mr Rouhani has so far refused.
- Iran nuclear crisis in 300 words
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"It is essential for Iran to continue interactions with the agency to resolve the matter as soon as possible," the report added.
The report did not say where the particles were found, but three senior Israeli security and intelligence officials told a briefing last Thursday that inspectors had visited the site in Turquzabad earlier this year and taken environmental samples.
The Israeli officials claimed the tests showed that uranium had been stored at the site, but not in a form that could yet be used for a weapon. The BBC understands the uranium was not enriched.
During a speech at the UN in September 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu showed photos of a complex in Turquzabad, which he said was a "a secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and materiel from Iran's secret nuclear weapons program".
Mr Netanyahu said the Iranian authorities had removed 15kg (33lb) of radioactive material from the warehouse the previous month and "spread it around Tehran in an effort to hide the evidence".
Iran's foreign ministry said the speech was "false, meaningless and unnecessary".
This September, Mr Netanyahu alleged that the Iranian authorities had cleared and covered up the Turquzabad site.
"They put gravel on it to try to hide their traces. But they didn't," he added. "The IAEA found traces of uranium that Iran hid in these sites. That's a direct violation of the NPT, the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty."
He spoke after acting IAEA Director General Cornel Feruta stressed the need for Iran to "respond promptly to agency questions related to the completeness of Iran's safeguards declarations".
Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, rejected the Israeli claims, tweeting: "The possessor of REAL nukes cries wolf—on an ALLEGED 'demolished' site in Iran."