Moscow, Feb 22 : (Sputnik) Tehran will continue to fully implement the Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the organization’s extended inspections are restricted on February 23, the IAEA and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said.
“[The IAEA and AEOI agreed] That Iran continues to implement fully and without limitation its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA as before,” the organizations said in a joint statement on Sunday.
The AEOI informed the IAEA that Iran will stop the implementation of the voluntary measures regarding the inspections, as envisaged in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or the Iran nuclear deal) on Tuesday, February 23.
“… the IAEA will continue with its necessary verification and monitoring activities for up to 3 months (as per technical annex),” the organizations said in their joint statement.
The AEOI specified that the IAEA monitoring will be limited: Iran will keep video surveillance data from cameras installed at certain nuclear sites and will not give IAEA inspectors any access to it. If after three months, sanctions against Iran are lifted, Iran will pass the surveillance videos to the IAEA, but if sanctions are left in place, Iran will destroy the videos.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on Twitter after the Sunday talks with Iran that “intensive consultations led to a good result” and that a “temporary technical understanding has been reached.”
Grossi visited the Iranian capital, Tehran, over the weekend to discuss Iran’s decision to limit IAEA inspections of its nuclear sites.
In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with the P5+1 group of countries (the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom – plus Germany) and the European Union. It required Iran to scale back its nuclear program and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including lifting the arms embargo five years after the deal’s adoption. In 2018, the US abandoned its conciliatory stance on Iran, withdrawing from the JCPOA and implementing hard-line policies against Tehran, prompting Iran to largely abandon its obligations under the accord.
In December, Iran passed a law to increase its uranium enrichment and stop UN inspections of its nuclear sites in response to the killing of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. At the start of January, Iran’s atomic energy organization announced that the country had succeeded in enriching uranium at 20 percent at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant.(UNI)