Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, says agreement with Tehran is ‘important step in the right direction’
Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, says agreement with Tehran is ‘important step in the right direction’
Tehran and the UN nuclear inspectorate have reached an agreement that will allow UN inspectors to return to inspect all of Iran’s nuclear sites, including those bombed by Israel and the US in June.
The breakthrough, confirmed by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came during a three-hour meeting on Monday between Grossi and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Cairo.
Agreement on the return of the UN inspectors is one of the preconditions set by European leaders for them to defer a plan to reimpose sweeping UN sanctions on Iran at the end of this month.
Grossi described the agreement as “an important step in the right direction”, but said the full agreement would not be published. Inside Iran, some parliamentarians were demanding access to the agreement, but parliament is in recess for three weeks and their demands for details of the deal face practical hurdles.
