International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Grossi said on Monday he had agreed with Iran to extend the monitoring agreement. Mr Grossi made the announcement after reaching agreement with Ali Akbar Salehi, vice-president and head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.
European diplomats had warned that failure to extend the monitoring pact would endanger talks scheduled for Vienna this week. Those talks aim to bring the two countries back into full compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The 2015 deal is designed to ensure Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons by restricting its uranium enrichment programme. Tehran says it has never wanted to build nuclear weapons.
Former US president Donald Trump's administration abandoned the nuclear deal three years ago and then reimposed harsh economic and trade sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran responded by breaching the 2015 deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities. Its move to curb IAEA access was widely seen as a means of pressuring president Joe Biden’s administration to return to the nuclear deal and lift sanctions.
Under their agreement announced today, information collected by IAEA monitoring equipment covered by a three-month technical understanding agreement signed in February will continue to be stored for a further period of one month up to 24 June. The IAEA and Iran also agreed that the equipment will continue to operate and be able to collect and store further data for this period.
Mr Grossi said he welcomed the development. “The expiration of the technical understanding, which enabled the agency’s verification and monitoring, would have been a serious loss at this critical time,” he added. “This agreed way forward ensures continuity of knowledge for a limited period of time.”
Iran said earlier this year that the country has started site work for construction of a third Russia-supplied nuclear power plant at Bushehr. The semi-official Fars News Agency reported that that levelling work had begun on an area for the third plant at the site, on the Persian Gulf coast about 750 km south of Teheran.
In November 2019, Iran said it had started construction of a second plant at Bushehr. At the time, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said it had “long-term” plans to build a third plant.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Bushehr-1, Iran’s first commercial nuclear plant, officially began commercial operation in September 2013. It had begun operating at full capacity in 2012 and now supplies about 2% of the country’s electricity.
The 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with six major powers, including Russia, placed restrictions on the sort of nuclear technology Tehran could develop and its production of nuclear fuel, but it did not require Iran to halt its use of nuclear energy for power generation.
