A possible obstacle to negotiations between Iran and the US over the future of the nuclear deal was eliminated after the UN nuclear inspectorate said it won Iran’s deal to return to Tehran to keep talks focused on doubts about the veracity of earlier statements by the UN. parents. nuclear facilities.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said that inspectors from Iran and the IAEA have been talking to each other, with Iran failing to provide reliable answers to the province’s questions. He said he decided to “either continue with this merry-go-round or try something else”.
He said that Iran has now agreed to participate in direct and focused technical meetings in early April, with the aim of inspectors reporting to an IAEA board meeting in June.
The deal reached in the past 48 hours means that European countries will not move forward with plans to file a motion of censure against Iran at an IAEA board meeting on Friday.
Q&A
What is the nuclear deal with Iran?
In July 2015, Iran and a six-nation negotiating group reached a historic agreement known as the Joint Global Action Plan, which ended a 12-year stalemate over Tehran’s nuclear program. The agreement, signed in Vienna after almost two years of intense negotiations, limited the Iranian program, to assure the rest of the world that it cannot develop nuclear weapons in exchange for easing sanctions.
In essence, the JCPOA is a straightforward bargain: Iran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear program in exchange for an escape from the sanctions that grew around its economy over the decade before the agreement. Under the agreement, Iran disconnected two-thirds of its centrifuges, dispatched 98% of its enriched uranium and filled its plutonium production reactor with concrete. Tehran has also accepted extensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has verified 10 times since the agreement, and until February, that Tehran has complied with its terms. In return, all nuclear-related sanctions were lifted in January 2016, reconnecting Iran to global markets.
The six major powers involved in nuclear negotiations with Iran were part of a group known as P5 + 1: the five permanent members of the UN security council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – and Germany. The nuclear agreement is also enshrined in a UN security council resolution that incorporated it into international law. The 15 board members at the time unanimously endorsed the agreement.
On May 8, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the agreement. Iran announced its partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal a year later. Trump’s successor Joe Biden said the United States could return to the deal if Iran fulfilled its obligations.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iranian correspondent
Iran had said it would indeed end its cooperation with the IAEA if the motion went ahead, which would have undermined hopes of starting informal negotiations between Iran and the United States on how the two sides could return to comply with the agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, that the chances of reviving the nuclear deal would collapse without a clear gesture from Iran.
In response to Iran’s offer to clarify its disclosures, Europe said it would postpone its motion of censure to allow time for diplomacy.
Iran has said it will not hold talks with the United States if sanctions remain in place, and the United States says it will not hold talks until Iran takes further steps to return to compliance.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said: “Today’s events can keep the path of diplomacy initiated by Iran and the IAEA open.”
The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, tweeted that “due to extensive diplomatic consultations … a glimmer of hope is approaching to avoid unnecessary tensions”.
This week, a report in the Iranian newspaper Vatan-e-Emrooz said that Tehran had “temporarily suspended production of metallic uranium on the order of [Rouhani]”. The Tehran government has not disputed the report’s accuracy.
The production of metallic uranium goes against the 15-year ban on the nuclear agreement to “produce or acquire plutonium or uranium metals or their alloys”. Grossi said he had not been informed by Iran about anything related to metallic uranium.
Iran says the production of metallic uranium is part of its plans to supply advanced fuel to a research reactor in Tehran.
Grossi did not elaborate on why he thought his new technical process would provide more reliable answers than those provided so far, but he is clearly determined not to see the process abandoned prematurely.
At the end of last month, Iran suspended some IAEA inspections because U.S. sanctions had not yet been lifted, which Grossi described as a “major loss” for the agency. However, after two days of negotiations between Grossi and Iranian officials in Tehran, a three-month agreement was reached, according to which Iran has committed to keeping recordings of “some monitoring activities and equipment” and handing them over to the IAEA when US sanctions were lifted.
Grossi said the IAEA has a series of unanswered questions, but did not elaborate. It was previously reported that Iran may be drilling into a metallic uranium disk that, experts say, could be used to create material for a neutron initiator, a key component of a nuclear weapon. A second suspicion was that nuclear material had been introduced into a location where Iran may have tested high explosives that could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon.
The agency is also asking Iran about another undeclared location where the uranium conversion and illicit processing may have occurred.