IAEA Director General Announces Visit to Iran in February for Political Dialogue

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Tuesday he was going to visit Iran in February to assess the situation regarding nuclear non-proliferation and resume the political dialogue.

"I believe I might be back in Tehran on this and on the other issues I described to you, in February perhaps, for much needed political dialogue… with Iran. And then, I hope to be making some progress," he told the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament.

Grossi also said Iran had enough enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb, however it did not mean that the weapon already existed.

Answering the lawmakers' questions, Grossi said that Iran had failed to provide the IAEA with explanations on many aspects, as well as violated agreements under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Iran has repeatedly stressed it has no intention of creating nuclear weapons; in fact, Iranian leadership imposed a fatwa in 2003 on the production or sage of any form of nuclear arms.

The JCPOA was negotiated between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as Germany and the European Union in July 2015. In 2018, the US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, saying that Iran had violated the deal by developing nuclear weapons in secret. In response, Iran suspended parts of its own obligations under the deal, demanding the US lift sanctions.

In December 2021, talks on the revival of the JCPOA resumed. However, progress on the deal was frozen by September 2022 due to a series of mass protests in the Islamic Republic, for which Tehran blames the US and other Western countries.