The UN agreed with Iran on an interim nuclear inspection regime but warned: “We will have less access, we have to be honest”

Iran and the IAEA, the UN nuclear agency, agreed on Sunday on a new, more limited verification regime for a period of three months, to control the Persian nuclear program before the suspensions of cooperation announced by Tehran for next week.

This was announced by the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, on his return to Vienna after a two-day visit to Tehran, where he met Iran’s top nuclear negotiators. “We will have less access (than so far), we have to be honest, but we will be able to maintain the necessary level of monitoring and verification”Grossi said in press statements at the airport in the Austrian capital.

A few hours earlier, the Iranian authorities had declared to have had “fruitful discussions” with the head of the UN nuclear agency, who arrived in the Iranian capital on Saturday, where he met the President of the Iranian Organization on Sunday. atomic energy, Ali Akbar Salehi, and with the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The tension around Iran’s nuclear program and its verification by the IAEA is due to to an Iranian law which comes into force on Tuesday and which provides for the suspension of the application of the so-called “Additional Protocol” of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) if the United States does not lift its sanctions on the country. This protocol allows IAEA inspectors to visit and investigate any facility in Iran, whether civilian or military, without notice.

This is a key measure of the 2015 nuclear agreement, then signed by Iran and the so-called 5 + 1 group (United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia and China), to limit the nuclear program Iranian in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Former US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in May 2018 and the Iranian regime began a year later to gradually violate its essential elements, in particular the level of uranium enrichment (at 20%).

Grossi stressed this Sunday that “the law exists and will be applied”, which means that “The additional protocol will be suspended.” “However, we have agreed on a specific bilateral agreement to get through this period as well as possible without losing the necessary verification capacity”, summed up the CEO.

Grossi expressed in this regard the hope that the United States and Iran can reach an agreement in the near future so that the two sides can fully comply with the 2015 agreement, known as the JCPOA, for its acronym in English.

The President of the United States, the Democrat Joe biden, did not rule out the country returning to the agreement, but for this it first demanded Iran must once again abide by all the rules.

The Islamic Republic, for its part, says it will only act on its violations of the JCPOA once Washington lifts its sanctions, especially the oil embargo that has hit its economy hard.

Last Thursday, The United States accepted the Europeans’ invitation to participate in discussions to relaunch the 2015 agreement. But the next day, Biden urged European powers to work with Washington to respond. Iran’s “destabilizing activities” in the Middle East.

Faced with constant denunciations from Western powers, the Islamic Republic has always denied having any intention of possessing nuclear weapons. The 2015 international agreement provided for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for Iran dropping the atomic bomb.

Despite the Persian regime’s denials, the latest violations of the agreement have put the international community on alert. Last week, the IAEA reported that Tehran had started manufacturing uranium metal. On February 8, the United Nations agency “verified 3.6 grams of uranium metal at the Isfahan plant” (in the center of the country). The question is delicate because uranium metal can be used to make nuclear weapons.

The nuclear deal includes a 15-year ban on “the production or acquisition of plutonium or uranium metals and their alloys”. In addition, the pact provides that Iran could be allowed to begin investigating the production of uranium fuel “in small quantities” after 10 years, but only with the permission of the other signatories.

With information from EFE

Read on: