Chief Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday [March 1] that the work of agency inspectors should be “preserved” and “not be put in the middle of a negotiating table as a bargaining chip.”

Grossi, who recently agreed with Tehran a three-month agreement over access to Iran’s nuclear program, spoke at a press conference at the start of an IAEA governing board meeting in Vienna. The meeting, the first since Joe Biden became United States president, is expected to continue until the end of the week with an emphasis on Iran.

In a text prepared for his introductory statement to the governors, which was provided to the media, Grossi described his agreement with Iran as a “temporary technical understanding” that was compatible with recent laws passed by the Iranian parliament reducing IAEA access. Grossi said it would enable the agency to “resume its full verification and monitoring of Iran’s nuclear-related commitments” once Tehran returned its nuclear program to the limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the JPCOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

On February 23 Iran stopped allowing snap inspections by the IAEA and instead adopted the “temporary technical understanding” it had reached with Grossi.

Iran has said it will reapply these limits – which it began to exceed in 2019, after the US left the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ – once Washington lifted sanctions as required by the JCPOA. On Monday IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, said that the IAEA meeting was “the best scene for verifying the claims made by the new US administration on respecting diplomacy, multilateralism, and Washington’s behavior modification in dealing with other countries.”

Last week Bloomberg reported that the US had circulated a three-page document listing Washington’s grievances and demanded Iran resume wider cooperation with inspectors. A US-proposed resolution would “underscore strong concern” and “express the board’s deepening concern with respect to Iran’s cooperation.”

On Monday, the spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEIO) Behrouz Kamalvandi reiterated that Tehran would retain footage from IAEA cameras for three months, passing it to the agency once sanctions had been lifted: “Otherwise the footage will be deleted from the cameras and any new recordings will stop.”

Earlier on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif echoed Sunday’s warning from nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi that a board statement condemning Tehran would hamper progress. Zarif said the European signatories of the JCPOA – France, Britain and Germany – appeared to have begun with the US “a wrong move in the Board of Governors which we think will cause a muddle.” Zarif said Tehran had through its ambassador in Vienna made its case to board members and hoped for a “wise” decision: “Otherwise, we have solutions [to respond].”

In his report to the IAEA governors, Grossi expressed concern that Iran had not provided adequate explanations for the presence of multiple uranium particles at an “undeclared location,” nor given answers to agency questions over the possible presence of nuclear material at three other locations, none of which was declared to the Agency. These issues relate to work carried out before 2003, which Iran is required to explain.