Iran and the UN nuclear agency have agreed to restart talks focused on the agency’s attempts to probe suspicions that Tehran worked on atomic weapons, diplomats said today, in the first such meeting since Iran’s hard-line president was replaced by a more moderate successor.
The diplomats informed that the negotiations will resume on September 27, with the main focus on gaining access to a section of a military site that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has long tried to access. IAEA experts met Iranian negotiators 10 times over 18 months in futile efforts to start their probe of the area in question at the Parchin complex, southeast of Tehran.
The agency suspects that the location was used by the Islamic Republic to test conventional explosive triggers for a nuclear blast. Iran denies working on atomic weapons at Parchin or anywhere else and says its nuclear program is peaceful.
With no new date announced for the resumption of broader nuclear talks between Iran and five world powers on hold, the meeting on Parchin will be the first test of centrist President Hasan Rouhani’s pledge to reduce confrontation with the international community.
Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran blamed the IAEA for the standoff over Parchin, saying it is caused by the agency’s refusal to agree on strict parameters that would govern its probe.