The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi met the newly appointed Irani nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami in Tehran late on Sunday.
The talks with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Grossi were aimed at easing a standoff between Tehran and the West just as it threatens to escalate and scupper negotiations on reviving the Iran nuclear deal.
Both sides called the meeting “constructive” and agreed on continuing discussions on the sidelines of the agency’s general conference in Vienna later this month.
Eslami also scheduled a future meeting with Grossi as the head of the United Nations’ nuclear agency 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.
“IAEA’s inspectors are permitted to service the identified equipment and replace their storage media which will be kept under the joint IAEA and AEOI seals in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the nuclear bodies said in a joint statement.
Iran has since February said it will only hand over the tapes to the agency after an agreement is reached in Vienna that will lift unilateral United States sanctions.
“What matters to us, and the agency also emphasizes upon, is to build trust,” Eslami said following the meeting.
The meeting came days after two new confidential IAEA reports were shared with the media, showing the agency’s concern over Iran’s nuclear program.
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.
The last-minute meeting on Sunday was reportedly facilitated by Russia, which has not been in favor of a resolution against Iran at the next conference of the IAEA board of governors on Monday as it could derail nuclear deal talks.
Indirect talks between the United States and Iran on both returning to compliance with the deal have been halted since June. Washington and its allies have been urging President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration, which took office in August, to return to the talks.
The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, France, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia. But Former U.S President Donald Trump pulled the States out of the deal in 2018, imposing harsh sanctions.
In response to the sanctions, attacks on its nuclear facilities, and the assassination of a top nuclear scientist, Iran gradually boosted its nuclear program and is now enriching uranium to 60 percent, its highest-ever level.
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