The UN body’s director-general also said the IAEA would increase the pace of its visits to the Fordo underground facility.
Is that a tentative sign of de-escalation in the sensitive Iranian nuclear issue? Iran has agreed to reconnect surveillance cameras at several nuclear sites, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general, who had returned from Tehran, said on Saturday, March 4. “We have agreed that the cameras and surveillance systems will work again,” said Rafael Grossi at Vienna Airport.
This should happen “very soon” after a technical meeting, he said, while the joint statement with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEIO) remains vague.
In addition, the number of visits to the UN facility at the Fordo underground facility, which recently discovered uranium particles enriched to a level of 83.7% close to the atomic bomb threshold, will increase by 50%. Rafael Grossi returned from a two-day visit to Tehran, where he held high-level talks, notably with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The goal of “reviving the 2015 deal” on Iran’s nuclear energy
The Islamic Republic had severely curtailed inspections and shut down surveillance cameras last year, throwing the IAEA into obscurity in a context of deteriorating relations between Iran and Western powers. “We have stopped the information overload” available to the IAEA, said Rafael Grossi.
In recent months, due to a lack of adequate oversight, the agency has said it is no longer able to guarantee the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. “It’s very, very important,” “especially in light of the revival of the deal” of 2015 that limited Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting international sanctions. Negotiations on this issue have been dormant since summer 2022. They started in April 2021 in Vienna between Tehran and the signatory states (China, Russia, UK, France and Germany) with indirect participation from the United States, but they have been suspended since August 2022.
Since 2018, the Islamic Republic has gradually freed itself from its obligations. Its total stock of enriched uranium as of Feb. 12 was 3,760 kg (up from 3,673 kg in October), more than 18 times the JCPOA-approved limit, according to IAEA calculations.