The UN atomic agency was to resume talks in Tehran yesterday to tackle allegations of past Iranian weapons work and discuss more practical steps to increase the transparency of the country’s nuclear drive.
The one-day encounter between Iran and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will build on a framework deal agreed in November last year that required Tehran to take six practical steps by Tuesday.
With completion of those measures — including a visit to the heavy water plant at the unfinished Arak reactor — negotiations on “more difficult things” are expected to begin, IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano has said.
Iranian Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi has said that, based on the IAEA’s assessment of progress, the scope of future cooperation will be decided.
He expressed hope that “the agency’s doubts have been removed.”
Led by chief inspector Tero Varjoranta, the IAEA team is to meet Iranian nuclear officials, led by Iran’s IAEA envoy, Reza Najafi.
Kamalvandi said the talks could be extended if there is major progress.
The six-step deal was struck in November last year after two years and nearly a dozen rounds of talks. It is separate to the landmark nuclear agreement also reached in November with world powers that put temporary curbs on nuclear activities.
Implementation began on Dec. 8 last year, when IAEA inspectors visited Arak, whose small, unfinished heavy water reactor has been hit by a series of delays.
The site, which Iran insists is an integral part of its nuclear program, is of international concern because Tehran could theoretically extract weapons-grade plutonium from its spent fuel if it also builds a reprocessing facility.
However, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran head Ali Akbar Salehi said earlier this week the reactor could be modified to produce less plutonium to “allay the worries.”
And he insisted that Iran did not intend to build a reprocessing plant.
Iran’s nuclear activities have been in the international spotlight for the past decade over suspicions in the West and Israel that they mask military objectives, despite repeated Iranian denials.
The IAEA is focusing on Tehran’s past work to clear long-standing allegations that, prior to 2003, and possibly since, Iran’s nuclear drive had “possible military dimensions.”
Rejecting those allegations as baseless, Iran denies that it is seeking now or has ever sought nuclear weapons.
Amano said in an interview last month that it was now the time to ask the “more difficult” questions and push Iran on those issues.
“We started with measures that are practical and easy to implement, and then we move on to more difficult things,” Amano said. “We certainly wish to include issues with ‘possible military dimensions’ in future steps.”
How long this takes “very much depends on Iran. It can be quick or it can be long. It really depends on their cooperation.”
The IAEA has been asking Iran in vain for years to grant inspectors access to the Parchin military facility, where it suspects Tehran may have experimented with atomic weapons development.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited