Iran’s permanent mission to the UN in New York has firmly rebutted claims suggesting that Iran had breached the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the official news agency IRNA reported on Friday.

The Institute for the Study of War, a policy research organization on US national security, alleged that Iran had been focusing on how to produce and deliver pharmaceutical-based chemical agents for military use, citing a Nov 26 report by the US Institute for Science and International Security.

In response to the allegation, the Iranian diplomatic mission wrote Thursday on social media platform X that Iran stands as a responsible signatory to the CWC, which strictly forbids the development, production, and stockpiling of chemical weapons, asserting that “over the past several decades, not a single instance of Iranian violation has been recorded”.

It called the allegation “unfounded” and “merely an outgrowth of psychological warfare propagated by the Zionist regime (Israel) in the wake of its recent defeat on the Lebanese front”.

The same day, senior Iranian diplomats met with officials from Britain, France, and Germany behind closed doors in Geneva to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, according to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi.
 As Iran’s negotiator, Gharibabadi described the discussions with representatives from France, Germany, and Britain as “candid.”

In his post on the social platform X, he said the meeting talked about and evaluated the recent bilateral, regional and international developments, particularly the nuclear issue and the lifting of sanctions.
 Iran is “firmly committed to pursuing the interests of the people,” he said, stressing that the preferred approach remains the path of dialogue and engagement.

All parties agreed to continue diplomatic dialogue in the near future, he added.

Till press time, there are no public comments or official statements from the three European countries involved in the Friday discussion.

In July 2015, Iran signed the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with world powers, accepting restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions by the West. However, the US withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, reinstating sanctions and prompting Iran to scale back some of its nuclear commitments.

The talks on the revival of the JCPOA began in April 2021 in Vienna, Austria. Despite several rounds of talks, no significant breakthrough has been achieved since the end of the last round in August 2022.