Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency have reached an agreement on resuming inspections of Tehran’s nuclear programme, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced late on Tuesday.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Beqaei said the agreement was reached following talks between Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi at a meeting hosted by Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.
“In Cairo today, agreed with Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi on practical modalities to resume inspection activities in Iran. This is an important step in the right direction,” Mr Grossi said in a post on X, accompanied by photos of the two men signing the agreement.
Details of the agreement were not immediately available. The meeting began five hours late because Mr Rossi's plane was delayed, Iranian state news agency Irna reported.
Mr Beqaei said earlier that their discussions would cover the framework for Tehran's future interaction with the IAEA, which is responsible for conducting inspections to ensure Iran complies with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The IAEA issued a report censuring Iran for non-compliance on June 12, a day before Israel began attacking its nuclear facilities, military sites, nuclear scientists and senior military commanders.
Under a law passed by the Iranian Parliament days after the war ended, Iran's Supreme National Security Council will have to approve any future inspections by the IAEA.
Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran agreed to IAEA monitoring of its nuclear sites to ensure it was not developing atomic weapons, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The deal effectively collapsed after the US pulled out in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that have stifled Iran's economy.
France, Germany and the UK, the European signatories to the deal, last month initiated a "snapback" provision to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran before the deal expires in October, citing its lack of co-operation with the IAEA.
The attacks by Israel, and a round of bombing by the US, appear to have damaged or destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities, including underground uranium enrichment sites, but UN inspectors have not been given access to these. Iran has also refused to clarify the fate of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which the IAEA estimates to be enough to produce several atomic weapons. Tehran has repeatedly denied seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Mr Grossi warned on Monday that Iranian nuclear sites faced a higher probability of being attacked unless international inspectors were allowed to resume their work.
He was speaking after a meeting of the agency in Vienna to discuss the crisis and how to monitor Iran’s atomic activities.
“If we are able to resume in earnest our work with Iran and inspections in full start to take place, the possibility of further military action will be diminished,” Mr Grossi said.
He said he was hoping for an initial agreement “within the next few days or hours” that would include an Iranian declaration about the state and location of its uranium stockpile. After that, officials would still need to negotiate physical access to damaged sites.
Iran’s ban on international nuclear inspections has led to a critical loss of knowledge about the country’s atomic work, the IAEA wrote last week.
While satellite images show the Israeli and US air strikes curtailed much of Iran’s above-ground nuclear activity, they rolled back decades of access by UN inspectors to Tehran’s vast atomic complex.
It is the first time since Iran began enriching uranium in 2006 that the IAEA has not been able to account for changes to its stockpile. Monitors were last able to confirm the state and location of Iran’s near bomb-grade uranium a few days before the June 13 attacks began.
“The difficulties lie in the fact that we need to perform a number of inspections – we have to go to places that were destroyed partially or totally, where conditions for physical access could be challenging,” Mr Grossi said. “It’s not a straightforward discussion.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said earlier on Monday that talks with IAEA officials were moving in the right direction.
“We haven’t yet reached a conclusion in the talks with IAEA, but the course of the discussions has been positive,” Mr Baqaei said. “We are waiting for final talks to take place and for the final text of the agreement between Iran and the IAEA regarding interaction under the new circumstances to be finalised.”
