Tehran: Iran and the UN atomic agency on Sunday reached an agreement to avert the crisis surrounding the nuclear deal.
According to Al Jazeera, the agreement will prevent another crisis looming over the prospect of restoring Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.
Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), landed in Tehran on Saturday and met Mohammad Eslami, the newly appointed head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Sunday morning.
It was Grossi’s first trip to Tehran during the new administration of President Ebrahim Raisi, who appointed Eslami as the new nuclear chief on August 29.
Both sides called the meeting constructive and agreed they will continue discussions on the sidelines of the agency’s general conference in Vienna later this month, Al Jazeera reported.
It further reported that both sides also agreed that Grossi would travel to Tehran again soon to replace the agency’s monitoring cameras’ memory cards, which will still be kept in Iran in line with a law passed by the hardline Iranian parliament in December.
The meeting came days after two new confidential IAEA reports were shared with the media, showing the agency’s concern over Iran’s nuclear programme.
The reports said Iran has failed to adequately cooperate on the agency’s recording equipment, some of which may have been destroyed after an incident, while it is resuming high enrichment of uranium, and has not provided a full explanation on nuclear materials at several locations, Al Jazeera reported.
In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with the P5+1 group of countries. The agreement required Iran to scale back its nuclear program and downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, the US withdrew from the JCPOA and began imposing sanctions on Iran in violation of the nuclear agreement.