Following months of pressure from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Iran finally agreed on Wednesday to grant International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to two sites suspected of hosting secret nuclear activities.
A joint statement was released by Iran and the IAEA as the agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, was on his first visit to the country during his tenure.
“Iran is voluntarily providing the IAEA with access to the two locations specified by the IAEA and facilitating the IAEA verification activities to resolve these issues,” said the statement. “In this present context, based on analysis of available information to the IAEA, the IAEA does not have further questions to Iran and further requests for access to locations other than those declared by Iran,” it continued.
The joint statement noted that a date for the inspections had been agreed on, but did not elaborate. Upon Grossi’s return to Vienna, he said it was “very, very soon,” according to Reuters.
The IAEA had been pressuring Iran for access to the sites since January, according to the report.
Israel covertly obtained some 55,000 pages of documents and 55,000 files on CD relating to Iran’s nuclear program in 2018. The IAEA is reportedly seeking access to at least one site mentioned in the intelligence trove.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi has warned the IAEA against making decisions based on information from the “Zionist regime.”
