Iran gets one more month to comply with IAEA Monitoring deal

Vienna: The International Atomic Energy Agency has reached a temporary arrangement with Iran to allow the extension of its monitoring agreement by one month.

Rafael Grossi, Director-General of IAEA told reporters on Monday that the new deal to continue with necessary verification and monitoring activities will be extended for a month until June 24.

Apart from the extension, IAEA and Iran have agreed that information collected by the technical equipment at different locations in Tehran is going to be saved and will continue to be under the custody of the Agency, reports Xinhua news agency.

Iran had stopped the implementation of the voluntary measures as envisaged in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, on February 23.

On February 21, the IAEA said that it had reached a temporary bilateral technical understanding with Iran, under which the Agency could continue with its necessary verification and monitoring activities for up to three months.

Grossi said that this understanding was "even more important now" because a number of things have been happening in Iran since February and clarified that the agency is not practically "flying blind" since they know what equipment is there and have their own calculations and estimations of what is going on.

"This is like an emergency device that we came up with in order for us to continue having these monitoring activities while at the same time recognizing the fact that, as you all remember, there was a law passed by the Islamic Republic of Iran suspending a number of rights" stressed Grossi.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's Permanent Representative to international organisations in Vienna, called Monday's agreement a "commendable step".

"It will help maintain a business-like atmosphere at the Vienna talks on JCPOA and facilitate a successful outcome of the diplomatic efforts to restore the nuclear deal," he added.

Since April 6, the JCPOA Joint Commission, chaired by European Union official Enrique Mora and attended by global powers and Iran, have been conducting meetings in Vienna on reviving the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and ensure its full and effective implementation.

The US government under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and unilaterally re-imposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran gradually stopped implementing parts of its JCPOA commitments from May 2019.