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achieve through newly relaxed relations with the West. To what extent they would bother to pursue such potential, given their bad experience with the US in recent years, is the only question.
2.4​ ​Iran agrees to continue cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog, grants access to two suspect sites
Iran nuclear deal joint commission to meet in Vienna as US persists with attempt at UN sanctions ‘snapback’
Iran will continue its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi on August 26. ​At the same time, Tehran agreed to grant IAEA inspectors access to two sites that have come under suspicion amid claims that they are former secret nuclear development programme sites.
“Iran, like before, is ready to cooperate with the IAEA,” Rouhani said, according to state TV. The granted access to the sites ends a two-month standoff between Tehran and the watchdog.
“Iran is voluntarily providing the IAEA with access to the two locations specified by the IAEA,” Grossi and Iran’s nuclear agency chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in a joint statement.
The dates for IAEA inspectors to visit the sites—one near Karaj west of Tehran, the other near Isfahan in central Iran—had been agreed, as well as the parameters of “verification activities” there, it added.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers—unilaterally abandoned by the US in 2018—Iran is implementing the “Additional Protocol”. It grants the IAEA the power to carry out snap inspections, even of places not declared to be nuclear sites.
While the Vienna-based agency says it has the right to go to the sites without permission, Iran lodged an objection because at least some of the information pointing to the two sites came from documents that Tehran’s main Middle East adversary Israel says it seized in Iran.
US intelligence services and the IAEA believe Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that it halted in 2003. But the Islamic Republic has always denied that its nuclear programme is for anything other than civilian purposes.
The Iran nuclear deal joint commission is to meet in Vienna on September 1, the European Union has announced.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on August 20 formally activated a process aimed at reimposing the UN sanctions on Iran, citing alleged Iranian violations of the nuclear deal. But France, Germany and Britain joined Russia and China in saying they could not support the move, as the US was no longer a nuclear deal member and the ‘snapback’ would be incompatible with efforts to retain and support the agreement.
"In order to preserve the agreement, we urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with its nuclear commitments and return to full compliance without delay," France, Germany and the UK said in a joint statement on August 20.
9​ IRAN Country Report September 2020 www.intellinews.com