TEHRAN: International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi met Iran’s top diplomat on Thursday (Nov 14) as he began crunch nuclear talks in Tehran weeks before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump was the architect of a policy called “maximum pressure” which reimposed sweeping economic sanctions that had been lifted under a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
“Rafael Grossi … who arrived in Tehran last night at the head of a delegation to negotiate with the country’s top nuclear and political officials, met with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.
Later, Grossi is expected to meet President Masoud Pezeshkian in their first meeting since his election earlier this year.
He is also scheduled to meet the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Eslami, before addressing a joint news conference.
Grossi’s visit is his second to Tehran this year but his first since Trump’s re-election.
In 2018, Trump unilaterally abandoned the 2015 deal that gave Iran relief from international sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear programme designed to prevent it from developing a weapons capability, an ambition it has always denied
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The following year, Iran started to gradually roll back its commitments under the deal, which barred it from enriching uranium to above 3.65 per cent purity.
The IAEA says Iran has significantly expanded its stocks of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, a level that has triggered international alarm as it is much closer to the 90 per cent level needed for a nuclear warhead.
The head of the IAEA “will do what he can to prevent the situation going from bad to worse” given the significant differences between Tehran and Western capitals, said Ali Vaez, an Iran specialist at the Crisis Group, a US-based think tank.
Iran has blamed the incoming US president for the standoff.
“The one who left the agreement was not Iran, it was America,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Wednesday.
“Mr Trump once tried the path of maximum pressure and saw that this path did not work.”
Grossi’s visit comes just days after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Iran was “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities”.
The archfoes have exchanged unprecedented direct attacks in recent months as tensions soared during the intensifying war between Israel and Iran allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Trump’s looming return to the White House in January has only added to international fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Iran.
“The margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink,” Grossi warned in an interview with AFP on Tuesday, adding that “it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions”.
Source: CNA
