Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi mentioned he could go to Iran quickly to carry a gathering on its nuclear program within the aftermath of Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president.
Grossi had beforehand mentioned he hoped to go to Tehran forward of the Nov. 5 U.S. vote as he seeks to resolve a number of long-standing points which have dogged relations between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western powers.
“We are already talking to colleagues in Iran for my next visit maybe in a few days. We still have to confirm the time but this will be done,” he advised a news convention in Rome after a nuclear vitality occasion.
Without confirming it, Iranian officers have welcomed a go to from Grossi, saying Tehran is able to cooperate with the IAEA to resolve excellent points, with out giving particulars.
Issues at stake embody Tehran’s barring of uranium-enrichment consultants from IAEA inspection groups within the nation and its failure for years to elucidate uranium traces discovered at undeclared websites.
Iran has additionally stepped up nuclear exercise since 2019, after then-President Trump deserted a 2015 deal Iran reached with world powers beneath which it curbed enrichment – seen by the West as a disguised effort to develop nuclear weapons functionality – and restored powerful U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
Tehran is now enriching uranium to as much as 60% fissile purity, near the roughly 90% required for an atom bomb. It has sufficient higher-enriched uranium to supply about 4 nuclear bombs, if refined additional, based on an IAEA yardstick.
Iran has lengthy denied any nuclear bomb ambitions, saying it’s enriching uranium for civilian vitality makes use of solely.
How Trump decides to deal with Iran in his second White House time period stays unclear. At an election rally on Tuesday, he mentioned he wished Iran to be a “very successful country” however that it “can’t have nuclear weapons”.
Snapback sanctions
Ahead of the U.S. election there had been indicators Tehran was able to re-engage with European events to the collapsed 2015 deal – Britain, France and Germany – and the U.S. to discover a technique to revive talks within the hope of getting U.S. sanctions relaxed.
But the regional geopolitical context has darkened to the detriment of any diplomatic breakthrough since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 assault.
Israel’s present invasion of Lebanon and tit-for-tat missile strikes between Iran and Israel have raised fears of a wider Middle East battle with some questioning whether or not it will be in Tehran’s curiosity to return to talks with a probably harder Trump administration.
Publicly, Iranian political leaders have downplayed the importance of the U.S. election consequence on Tehran’s insurance policies.
Their fundamental concern, although, is the potential for Trump to empower Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike Iranian nuclear websites, perform assassinations and reimpose his “maximum pressure” coverage by means of heightened sanctions on the nation’s oil business.
The European powers, often known as the E3, have sought to lift stress on Iran in current months regardless of scant leverage amid considerations the following Trump administration would want time to evaluate Middle East coverage.
That might go away little time to place a joint motion plan collectively earlier than October 2025, when U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrined the nuclear deal and the large powers’ prerogative to revive U.N. sanctions, expires.
Source: www.dailysabah.com