Iran's facilities inspection should not be bargaining tool

In an interview with the Elpais, the IAEA Director-General considered that there is no possibility of a linear and automatic return to the 2015 agreement and asked that inspections be removed from the negotiation.

He called on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States to take immediate steps to return to their commitments.

“Who has to take the first step?” he asked. “The one who left the deal or the one who stayed, but has a problematic situation? I believe that everyone has to take steps. Everyone. And they have to do it fast. We try to give diplomacy room to act.

"To that end, in Tehran in February and also now in March, in the Board of Governors, we have negotiated hard to preserve certain minimum arrangements for inspections"To that end, in Tehran in February and also now in March, in the Board of Governors, we have negotiated hard to preserve certain minimum arrangements for inspections. We all know that this is complex.”

“There is no possibility of a linear and automatic return to the 2015 agreement because a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Iran has enriched much more material and at much higher levels than allowed by the agreement. My mandate has nothing to do with sanctions, or concessions, or incentives,” he added.

Grossi continued: “We report regularly to the Board of Governors. Iran is already very close to the minimum quantity of nuclear material for which the possibility of it being used to build a device cannot be excluded if it does not already have it.

But this in itself is not a danger. It is an important piece of information. But getting a nuclear weapon requires more than that.”

He noted that the JCPOA reflected the will of the parties at one point and allowed a significant level of inspections, which is now greatly reduced.

“The setting and characteristics of the agreement have to be set by the participants. The important thing is that there is no war development, that Iran does not proliferate, that it does not manufacture a nuclear weapon. What I need to give the international community those guarantees is that my inspectors can have the access they need.

"We all know that this is complex.”“There is no possibility of a linear and automatic return to the 2015 agreement because a lot of water has passed under the bridge"Otherwise, it is impossible. That is what worries me.”

Addressing the three-month agreement with Iran, he described: “Our cameras continue to record, the flow monitors continue to record, the online systems continue to receive the information, but it is stored in Iran. They cannot touch it; is in our custody. At the end of the three months of this arrangement, if all goes well, we will have access to that information and we will be able to reconstruct everything that happened in each of the flows during those 90 days.”

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