Iran and IAEA Reach Agreement on Resuming Cooperation
Sept. 15—Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in a statement to the IAEA Board of Governors yesterday that the agency had signed an agreement with Iran in Cairo, Egypt Sept. 9 for resuming cooperation under Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. He noted that cooperation had been halted since the June attacks on Iranian nuclear installations had “led to an inevitable suspension of the inspection work in Iran. Complete.”
“Resuming this indispensable work would not be an automatic, or a simple bureaucratic process, after what happened,” Grossi said. “On top of this, as you all know, the Parliament of Iran adopted a law to suspend cooperation with the Agency. This risked putting us before the real possibility of Iran failing to observe and comply with its safeguards obligations.”
“Iran expressed concerns, and it is our duty as an international organization to listen to those, and find ways and means to address them in a form which would reconcile two equally important parameters: Iran’s new law, and the existing legal obligations emanating from the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT safeguards agreement,” Grossi continued. “This required dialogue and a thorough understanding of Iran’s views.”
The agreement is a technical document and won’t be made public, he explained, but it means, among other things, that “Iran and the Agency will now resume cooperation in a respectful and comprehensive way.”
Sources report that Russia had urged Iran to reestablish relations with the IAEA, despite the knowledge that agency had leaked names of Iranian scientists to the Israelis who later assassinated them. The sources say that the move was preliminary to a restart of negotiations with the U.S. to be headed by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to hammer a comprehensive nuclear treaty that would allow for the development of a robust peaceful nuclear program while ending Iran's nuclear weapons ambition. The sources report that Russia and the United States are working to bring this about as quickly as possible to prevent new military attacks on Iran by the deranged Netanyahu government in Israel. "At the moment, the Israelis are preoccupied with their attempt to exterminate the Gazan population and could not mount a military campaign against Iran," said a source.
In Cairo, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who signed the agreement on behalf of Iran, said that Sept. 10 marked an important step in demonstrating the continuity and steadfastness of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s goodwill towards resolving any issues related to its exclusively peaceful nuclear program through diplomacy and dialogue, reported IRNA. Araghchi said that the illegal military attacks of June and the continued threats of further action have fundamentally altered the conditions under which Iran was cooperating with the IAEA.
Araghchi told reporters on Sept. 10 that the most important aspect of the new agreement is that it acknowledges the “new conditions” following the attacks and subsequent measures taken by the Iranian Parliament and the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).
It also concedes that Iran has legitimate security concerns following the Israeli-U.S. aggression, he added. “After the attack, the situation changed, and in our discussions with the agency, we emphasized that cooperation could no longer continue as before and that a new framework must be defined for it,” Araghchi declared. He emphasized that the new agreement does not give any access to IAEA inspectors, except to oversee the fuel replacement process at the Bushehr nuclear plant.