VIENNA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s ambassador to international organizations based in Vienna says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will have no access to the country’s new nuclear site in the central city of Isfahan before the ongoing talks on the removal of U.S. sanctions and revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal reach a definitive result.
Muhammad Reza Ghaebi made the remarks after the IAEA said Iran had informed the world body that it would move the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows from TESA Karaj Complex to Isfahan.
Ghaebi said the process “has not started yet”.
“The IAEA will be able to adjust its surveillance rules accordingly, although the information gathered through that surveillance process will remain in Iran and the IAEA will not have access to it until Tehran resumes its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA,” he said.
The diplomat emphasized that the IAEA’s Monday report was a routine update on the “latest technical information on Iran’s nuclear activities to its members”.
In its Monday statement, the UN nuclear agency said its inspectors had installed surveillance cameras in a new workshop in Isfahan on January 24 to ensure the machines intended for the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows were under monitoring but the production of the parts there had not started then.
The UN nuclear agency said the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at TESA Karaj Complex had been ceased.
Back in December, Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said that the country had allowed the IAEA to reinstall its surveillance cameras at TESA Karaj Complex only after the UN nuclear agency met Tehran’s preconditions.
Envoys from Iran and the P4+1 group of countries — Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany — have been holding negotiations in the Austrian capital for roughly 10 months in a bid to resurrect the JCPOA.
On Monday, a senior U.S. State Department official asked for direct negotiations with Iran.
“If our goal is to reach an understanding quickly... the optimal way to do that, in any negotiation, is for the parties that have the most at stake to meet directly,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Since the Vienna talks began in April, Iran has declined direct negotiations with the U.S.