Iranian Foreign Minister Says IAEA Officials Will Visit Tehran

DUBAI, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit Tehran in the coming days, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Wednesday.

“As part of the conclusion of the negotiations, IAEA officials will visit Tehran in the coming days,” the minister said during a press conference with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad.

“We hope that IAEA Director (Rafael) Grossi will reach an agreement with the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization from an apolitical and technical point of view,” added Amirabdollahian.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency previously reported that the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, said IAEA inspectors had been in Tehran since Tuesday and had started negotiations, visits and verifications to resolve “ambiguities created by an inspector”. .

Last week, the UN nuclear watchdog said it was discussing the results of recent verification activities with Iran, after Bloomberg News reported that the agency had detected enriched uranium at 84% purity, which is close to the quality required for the manufacture of weapons.

A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization denied the report on Monday, saying Tehran’s uranium enrichment was not more than 60% pure.

“Through interaction and coordination, we prevent further ambiguities and disruptions from arising in our cooperation with the agency,” Eslami said on Wednesday.

Since the U.S. pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has gradually started moving beyond the pact’s nuclear restrictions and enriching uranium to 60% purity by April 2021.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought to acquire an atomic bomb,” Amirabdollahian added.

(Reporting from Dubai Newsroom; Spanish edited by Flora Gómez and Benjamín Mejías Valencia)