Iran, IAEA extend inspection agreement by one month

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have agreed to extend by one month an understanding to keep inspections alive and continue momentum on the nuclear talks in Vienna this week.

Spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry Saeed Khatibzadeh said the agreement between Iran and the IAEA allows recording within the Additional Protocols but doesn’t give access to IAEA inspectors. Iran’s parliament had passed a bill called the Strategic Action to Remove Sanctions, which called on Iran to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. The bill was designed so that the United States would remove crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic that were reapplied after former President Donald Trump exited the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018.

In order to salvage the talks, Iran and the IAEA came to an agreement that would allow Iran to continue to record its current nuclear sites but hold on to the tapes. Once Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council fully reentered the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action(JCPOA) then Iran would hand the recordings over to the IAEA. If they were not able to come to an agreement, then Iran would discard the recordings.

As far as the current talks taking place, Khatibzadeh said “there has been considerable progress” and “an understanding is near.” He continued that if the current US administration dropped the “behavior and attitude of the previous administration and distances itself from the maximum pressure campaign, a result could be achieved very easily.”