UN Nuclear Watchdog Head in Iran Ahead of New Talks

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi is in Tehran ahead of the resumption of talks aimed at reinstating the agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Grossi said on Tuesday that the International Atomic Energy Agency “is seeking to continue and deepen the dialogue with the government of Iran.”

Negotiations to reup the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement that Iran signed with the world powers in 2015 and began violating after the United States left the agreement in 2018, are set to begin in Vienna between Iran and the world powers on November 29; the United States will be participating indirectly in the negotiations. On Friday, the IAEA announced that Iran has again increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, to many times more than the limit set in the 2015 agreement.

Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday during a briefing that  the US has “made very clear that these continued nuclear escalations are unconstructive and they are at their core inconsistent with the stated goal – with Iran’s stated goal of returning to mutual compliance with the JCPOA.”

Price also said: “We continue to believe that diplomacy provides the most sustainable, the most durable, and really the only permanent and verifiable means of seeing to it that Iran can never again obtain a nuclear weapon. And so that’s why we are returning to Vienna to see to it if we can achieve that mutual return to compliance.”  He added that “we’re not going to engage in unilateral steps for the sake of just getting back to the table.”