‘Complex set of issues connected to the past and the present’
Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency are in negotiations on efforts to expand nuclear safeguards inspections on the country’s nuclear assets, but bilateral talks in Tehran on 6 and 7 May have not yet produced results.
“Iran has to deliver on the joint [civil nuclear safeguards] statement from [March] last year, but the process slowed down after a long period of not talking directly to each other, which was negative”, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said at a press conference in the central Iranian city of Isfahan on 7 May.
“Our aims are to engage and achieve concrete results from the proposals in the joint statement, such as the conduct of inspections or voluntary measures, which are specific,” said Grossi. “We discussed all of them and focused on what can be done asap, such as more technical measures.”
According to AP, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, Mohammad Eslami, said: “The important point is that Mr Grossi takes the necessary actions to settle the problems that are mainly political.
However, Grossi said that the most urgent measures include agreeing on a package, also satisfying Iran’s expectations, and before this is done, he cannot disclose more information on the progress of the negotiations.
Grossi said that “there is some kind of expectation of magically resolving issues, but we have a complex set of issues connected to the past and the present, so it is a difficult process”.
Grossi also told AP on 7 May that IAEA technical teams will stay longer in Iran to continue negotiations.
“There is a need to deliver very soon, but I cannot set deadlines, although for me and the international community, there is a need to produce results very soon. There is an understanding in Iran of that, too,” Grossi said.
“It will be good if this happens before the next IAEA board meeting, we almost had an impasse, this needs to change,” he said. “Access to facilities would be good,” he added.
Outstanding issues related to two of Iran’s nuclear sites have been resolved, and “we are in talks about the other two”, Eslami was quoted as saying in a Caspian News report on 3 May.
Grossi is trying to bolster his agency’s oversight of Tehran’s nuclear activities after various setbacks.
In 2018, then-US president Donald Trump ended a landmark deal between Iran and major powers that exchanged nuclear restrictions for sanctions relief.
Iran has since accelerated its uranium enrichment and reduced cooperation with IAEA. According to Reuters, Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the around 90% of weapons grade. If that material were enriched further, it would suffice for two nuclear weapons, according to an official IAEA yardstick.
Iran’s Ambitious Nuclear Power Plans
In July 2022, Iran announced plans to build a new nuclear research reactor at the Isfahan site. The Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre is Iran’s largest nuclear research complex and employs approximately 3,000 scientists.
Iran also has one commercial nuclear plant in operation and a second under construction at Bushehr, more than 600 km south of Isfahan.
Tehran has said it is planning to pour first concrete for a third unit at Bushehr.
In February, the official IRNA news agency reported that Iran had started construction of a four-unit nuclear power station, with a capacity of about 5,000 MW, in its southern coastal province of Hormozgan.
The US Department of State released a statement signed by the governments of the US, France, Germany and the UK, dated 28 December 2023, saying that Iran must “fully cooperate with the IAEA to enable it to provide assurances that its nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful, and to re-designate the inspectors suspended in September 2023”.
