Russia announced at noon (Saturday) that it is demanding from the United States guarantees that the sanctions imposed on it will not harm its cooperation with Iran, as part of the 2015 nuclear deal that the world powers are trying to revive.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “We have asked in writing for a guarantee that the current US process (sanctions on Russia) will not be harmed in any way by our right to free and full trade, economic cooperation, joint investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran.”
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said earlier today that he had visited Tehran over the weekend to “address some unresolved issues”, given the significant progress in the negotiations in Vienna.
Iran said it had agreed on a “road map” with the IAEA to resolve these issues by the end of June, after all parties involved in the talks in Vienna said they were close to reaching an agreement.
“We have agreed to provide the IAEA by the end of June with documents related to pending issues between Tehran and the nuclear agency,” Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency chief Muhammad Islami said at a news conference with IAEA chief Grossi.
Grossi arrived in Tehran last night to discuss one of the last issues still holding back the resuscitation agreement, which in exchange for lifting economic sanctions has limited uranium enrichment in Iran in order to make it more difficult for it to acquire nuclear weapons. “It’s important to reach that agreement, to work together, to work hard,” Grossi said at the news conference. “Without resolving this issue, efforts to revive the nuclear deal may be impossible.”
An issue that remains unresolved in the talks is Tehran’s desire to close the issue of uranium traces found at some old but unfamiliar sites in Iran. Western forces say this is a separate issue from the agreement.
Grossi, who also met with Iran’s foreign minister before returning to Vienna, said: “There are still issues that Iran needs to address.” The IAEA is trying to get answers from Iran to the question of how the footprints of the pines came to these sites.
“We decided to try a practical and pragmatic approach to controversial issues in order to allow our technical experts to examine them in a systematic, in-depth and thorough manner,” Grossi said. “But also with the intention of getting to the point where we agree on the outcome.”
Grossi’s trip has raised hopes that an agreement with the IAEA will also pave the way for the renewal of the nuclear deal with the superpowers, which was left in 2018 by then-US President Donald Trump, and then re-imposed sanctions on Iran. Since 2019 Tehran has violated the nuclear restrictions in the agreement and has begun to accumulate reservoirs of enriched uranium, enrich it to a higher level and install advanced centrifuges to accelerate enrichment. The IAEA has repeatedly reported that Iran has not given satisfactory explanations as to the source of the processed uranium traces. These traces imply that there is nuclear material that Iran has not declared to the nuclear agency.