Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has accused International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi of transforming the watchdog into a body that uses technical expertise to provide a “political justification for war”.

In a post on X, Baqaei laments that the watchdog, “whose authority rests on technical expertise, impartiality, and independence,” has become “a link in a chain connecting technical reporting to political justification”.

“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 writes.

“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,” Baqaei adds, warning that the IAEA risks becoming a tool to facilitate aggression if its “credibility is subordinated to political agendas”.

“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,” Baqaei writes.