Foreign Desk Report
VIENNA: Iran and the global nuclear watchdog have extended a technical agreement reached in February for another month, providing a vital window to negotiators in Vienna in their efforts to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive.
Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), announced in the Austrian capital on Monday that the three-month agreement, which was agreed in February, has been extended by one month under the same conditions.
Iran’s envoy to the Vienna-based organisation Kazem Gharibabadi also confirmed the extension until June 24.
The agreement allows the watchdog to maintain its monitoring equipment at Iranian nuclear sites, but Iran will keep the tapes until the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers is restored and United States sanctions are lifted. Former US President Donald Trump walked out of the deal in 2018 and slapped new harsh sanctions on Iran.
Grossi reiterated that the “stop-gap” measure had to be put in place as a way to prevent the agency from “flying blind” in implementing its comprehensive safeguards in Iran. “The IAEA never accepts any conditions on its mandate and activities,” he stressed, in reference to reports in Iranian media claiming that the country’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) would greenlight the extension contingent to “conditions” that were not named.
The West signed the deal in 2015 in an effort to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, though the Iranian leadership has insisted their nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. As part of the landmark deal, international sanctions were lifted in exchange for Iranian nuclear compliance to be monitored by the IAEA.
The ad hoc February agreement was required after Iran’s parliament passed a law that demanded the cessation of the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, a document that provides broad inspection abilities to the IAEA.
