Iran announced that it will allow United Nations investigators access to two suspected former nuclear sites that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been asking to visit for months.
The Wednesday announcement of an agreement came after IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi visited Tehran to meet with President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and other officials. News of the inspections was released in the form of a joint statement.
“Iran is voluntarily providing the IAEA with access to the two locations specified by the IAEA,” Grossi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in a statement. “The IAEA does not have any further questions to Iran and further requests for access to locations other than those declared by Tehran.”
The two parties said dates have been set for the inspections, although they have not been publicly released.
Grossi told IAEA members in March that the watchdog had “identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations that have not been declared by Iran,” according to the Associated Press.
Investigators had been blocked from visiting the former sites for months. In a June report, the U.N. team said that one site had undergone “extensive sanitization and leveling” in the early 2000s and would be of no value to inspect.
The watchdog also concluded that the other two sites might have conducted undeclared nuclear activity or stored nuclear material, although they are not thought to have been used in more than a decade. At one of the locations, the IAEA saw activities “consistent with efforts to sanitize” the site beginning in July of last year. The other was partially demolished in 2004.
A spokesperson with the State Department told the Washington Examiner that access to the sites is “only the first step” and that Iran “must provide nothing short of full cooperation.”
“As the IAEA Board of Governors stated clearly in June, Iran must cooperate fully with the IAEA without further delay,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We strongly support the IAEA’s efforts to ensure the effectiveness of international nuclear safeguards globally, including in Iran, where the IAEA has yet to receive information and access Iran is required to provide.”
News of the IAEA inspections comes as tensions between the United States and Iran are on the rise. The U.S. is attempting to institute a “snapback” of U.N. sanctions against Iran as an arms embargo against the country is set to expire in October. Iran also unveiled two missiles last week, stoking further ire in the region.
