Iran has handed over documents to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in order to help resolve questions over uranium particles found at old but undeclared nuclear sites in the country.
The questions over the nuclear remains at the three undeclared sites have been an obstacle to reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers. Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami announced on Wednesday that the documents had been handed over last month and that he expects IAEA representatives to travel to Iran to discuss the information contained in them.
The IAEA says it will announce its conclusions on the issue by June 2022, when the IAEA Board of Governors is scheduled to meet. Meanwhile, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said at a weekly press conference on Tuesday that new sanctions imposed by the US against Iran show Washington’s animosity toward the Iranian people and a lack of seriousness in the talks aimed at restoring the nuclear deal.
The US left the deal in 2018 under former President Donald Trump and restored sanctions on the Islamic Republic, but the Biden Administration is negotiating to re-enter a revived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is known. Tehran retaliated against the US by violating a number of key commitments under the deal. Since April 2021, several rounds of talks have been held in the Austrian capital Vienna between Iran and the remaining JCPOA parties – China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany – to revive and bring the US back into the deal.