President Ebrahim Raisi said on Thursday Iran "will not back off a single step" from its positions after the UN nuclear watchdog passed a resolution critical of Tehran, Iranian state media reported.
"In the name of God and the great nation of Iran, we will not back off a single step from our positions," Raisi said in a speech in southwestern Iran, referring to a resolution passed against Tehran at the International Atomic Energy Agency on Wednesday.
A video of the speech was carried by state media.
Iran on Thursday dealt a near-fatal blow to chances of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as it began removing essentially all the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring equipment installed under the deal, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said.
Iran had warned of retaliation if the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution drafted by the United States, France, Britain and Germany criticizing Tehran for its continued failure to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites. The resolution was passed by a crushing majority late on Wednesday.
Iran told the agency overnight it planned to remove equipment including 27 IAEA cameras as of Thursday, which is "basically all" the extra monitoring equipment installed under the 2015 deal going beyond Iran's core obligations to the agency, Grossi told a news conference.
That leaves a window of opportunity of three to four weeks to restore at least some of the monitoring that is being scrapped, or the IAEA will lose the ability to piece together Iran's most important nuclear activities, Grossi said.
"I think this would be a fatal blow (to reviving the deal)," Grossi said of what would happen if that window went unused. Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on reviving the 2015 deal have been stalled since March.
