Iran appears to have partially lifted the threat of sharply curtailing international inspections of its nuclear facilities from Tuesday, giving Western countries three months to see whether the start of a new diplomatic initiative with the United States and Europe in the nuclear deal 2015 will recover.
After a weekend trip to Tehran, Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Sunday that his inspectors would have ‘less access’ from Tuesday, but that they could still monitor the key production works where Iran had declared. that it makes core material. He did not describe what form these new borders would take, but said there would be a three-month hiatus on some of Iran’s new restrictions under a ‘technical appendix’ that has not been made public.
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that under a law passed by the country’s parliament, Tehran would no longer comply with an agreement with the nuclear agency that gives inspectors the right to demand access. to any site where they suspect that nuclear activity may have taken place. He also said inspectors could be blocked from obtaining footage from security cameras that constantly monitor some of the sites.
The vague announcement was apparently part of the maneuver in Iran over how to respond to an offer from the Biden government to resume diplomatic contact over the restoration of the agreement that President Donald J. Trump abandoned almost three years ago. President Biden and Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken have offered to join the European nations in the first substantive diplomacy with Tehran in more than four years.
“Iran has not yet responded,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told CBS ‘Face the Nation program on Sunday. ‘But what happened as a result was that the script was reversed. It is Iran that is now diplomatically isolated, not the United States. And the ball is in their court. ”
Iran has gradually sought to increase pressure on Washington to lift sanctions, with step-by-step increases in the amount of nuclear fuel it produces and announcements that it is starting to enrich uranium at higher levels, closer to bomb-grade material. The threat to restrict inspectors was part of the effort.
But now the Iranians find themselves backed in a corner of their own making: with a four-month presidential election, no one wants to look weak in the face of international pressure.
Iranian leaders also acknowledge that the election of Mr. Bid them the best chance to lift sanctions since 2018 – and international oil sales will flow. It will have to restore the production limits required by the 2015 agreement. The agreement also requires Iran to submit to the rapid inspections of unexplained sites under the so-called Additional Protocol, the rules that most members of the International Atomic Energy Agency comply with to allow broader rights for the inspectors.
Both mr. Grossi and White House officials were eager to avoid any suggestion that the limits of inspectors would create a crisis, such as the one the Clinton administration faced in 1994, when North Korea hired the agency’s inspectors expelled and chased for a bomb. In this case, the inspectors will continue their work in Iran, even if their vision of nuclear fuel production and their ability to detect the nuclear activities of the past are limited.
“Grossi has done damage,” Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who was a major critic of the Iran deal, said Sunday. But she added that ‘reduced monitoring in any form is extremely problematic due to the huge nuclear progress made by Iran’, especially after the agency started asking questions about nuclear activities in the past in places where it found traces of radioactive material.
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“The IAEA needs to publish the technical agreement and explain exactly how monitoring has been reduced so that the international community can assess the seriousness of Iran’s move,” she said. Stricker said.
Henry Rome, an Iranian expert on the Eurasia group, said the announcement on Sunday was “an opening, but we are not out of the woods”, noting that the country has continued to enrich uranium. and to test new, more advanced. centrifuges to produce the fuel.
The announcement that Iran has some kind of accommodation with Mr. Grossi who could buy time for diplomacy provoked reactions from all factions in Iran. And the absence of details from the country’s nuclear energy agency and from the international nuclear agency provided material to both those who wanted to restore the agreement and those who thought it was too restrictive on Iran’s capabilities.
Conservative commentators have turned to social media to criticize the government for passing a law passed by parliament in January restricting the inspectorate’s access.
“To strip the law?” Seyed Nezameddin Mousavi, a Conservative lawmaker, tweeted on Sunday, suggesting the government was trying to circumvent parliament’s actions. “It seems like my anxiety was justified.”
Supporters of diplomacy have praised the government for creatively thinking about recognizing the legal requirement without removing inspectors. Some have suggested that the compromise involves Iran’s agreement to preserve footage captured by security cameras that monitor fuel production, but not hand it over to inspectors before the 2015 agreement is restored.
“At this stage, the Iranians have agreed to more than we can see, but because the knowledge of the IAEA must be fully satisfied,” said Ali Vaez, Iran’s director for the International Crisis Group. “It basically postponed the crisis.”
Rick Gladstone contribution made.