IAEA calls for “common solutions” to differences over Iran’s nuclear program

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has advocated on Monday to find “common solutions” to achieve a solution to the differences over Iran’s nuclear program, in the midst of talks to try to reactivate the 2015 nuclear agreement, after Tehran has expressed its reservations on several points of the latest proposal presented by the European Union (EU), which exercises mediation work.

“The agency remains ready to resume contacts with Iran without delay to resolve these issues. We have to find common solutions to the problems, as they are not going to go away if we don’t solve them collaboratively,” he said.

Thus, he has regretted that the agency’s verification work on Tehran’s commitments to the nuclear deal has been “severely affected” by the authorities’ decision to stop implementing them, including the additional protocol, due to the decision to withdraw from the pact unilaterally in 2018.

“In the event of a full restart of Iran’s implementation of its nuclear commitments based on the agreement, the agency will need to address the knowledge gap about what took place while the surveillance and monitoring equipment was not operational,” he has recalled, before acknowledging that “there will be considerable challenges in confirming consistency with the pre-February 21, 2021 situation on Iran’s declared centrifuge and heavy water inventory.”

Grossi has further indicated that the agency “has made efforts to interact with Iran to resolve outstanding issues regarding the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at three undeclared facilities.” “Since June, Iran has not interacted with the agency, so these issues have not been resolved and we are not in a position to give assurances that the Iranian program is exclusively peaceful,” he concluded.

Iranian authorities have rejected on September 8 the latest IAEA report on the situation and stated that “it is a repetition of previous unfounded issues.” Likewise, the spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behruz Kamalvandi, reiterated that the “peaceful” Iranian nuclear program “has been the most transparent so far”.