A monitoring agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency ended, the speaker of Iran’s parliament announced Sunday. With the expiration of the deal, the UN nuclear watchdog would no longer have been able to view images from inside some of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi was in talks with Iran to extend the agreement entered in February, at the time that Iran backed off on much of its cooperation with the agency over the disintegration of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. On Monday afternoon Grossi announced that the agreement was extended by one month.
The expiration and brief extension of the monitoring agreement comes as a fifth round of nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers is set to begin in Vienna, which includes indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States, which left the deal in 2018 and slapped harsh sanctions on Iran.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that through the negotiations the US and Iran “have actually made progress in clarifying what each side needs to do to get back into full compliance.”
The outstanding question, the question that we don’t have an answer to yet, is whether Iran, at the end of the day, is willing to do what is necessary to come back into compliance with the agreement. That’s the proposition that we’re testing. But it’s getting, I think, through these rounds of discussions and talks, clearer and clearer what needs to happen. The question is: Is Iran prepared to do it?” Blinken also said.