IAEA Chief Says Hopes To Resume Cooperation With Iran As Soon As Possible

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hopes to resume cooperation with Iran on the issue of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as soon as possible and denies Tehran's accusations of the agency's politicization, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th September, 2022) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hopes to resume cooperation with Iran on the issue of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as soon as possible and denies Tehran's accusations of the agency's politicization, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on Monday.

"I really hope that Iran will start cooperating with us as soon as possible. We are ready, we want this to happen," Grossi told a press conference, adding that the IAEA had found traces of uranium in Iran in places that had never been declared.

According to the IAEA head, the agency cannot guarantee that Iranian nuclear program is exclusively peaceful unless Tehran gives an explanation of uranium traces found at its nuclear sites.

At the same time, Grossi stressed that the Iranian authorities constantly accused the agency in politicization when it demanded certain things to be presented.

In June, the IAEA board of Governors passed a resolution accusing Tehran of insufficient cooperation on nuclear safeguards, given that Iran had allegedly failed to explain traces of uranium at three nuclear sites.

Tehran argued that it had provided the IAEA with accurate technical details and criticized the agency for acting on "fake information" contributed by Israel. In response to the resolution, Iran installed advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment at its nuclear sites.

In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with the P5+1 group, which includes the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union. It required Tehran to scale back its nuclear program and drastically reduce its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including the lifting of an arms embargo five years after the deal was made.

In 2018, then US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions on Iran, to which the latter responded with a gradual abandoning of its own commitments under the deal. Several packages of US sanctions against Iran have since been imposed.

Vienna has been hosting talks since April 2021, aimed at preventing the Iran nuclear deal from failing altogether.