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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran have agreed to extend a temporary technical agreement on monitoring at the Iranian nuclear facilities until June 24, according to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. A three-month monitoring deal between Tehran and the UN‘s International Atomic Energy Agency expired on May 23.
As a result of talks held by Rafael Grossi with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi, the parties managed to agree on the extension of the agreement for a month.
“We were able to agree on a couple of things which are related, as you know, to this temporary technical understanding which we reached last February in Tehran,” Grossi said. “Number one, that the information collected by our technical equipment in different locations … is going to be saved and will continue to be under the custody of the agency,” he said. “Number two, that the equipment and verification and monitoring activities that we agreed will continue as they are now for one month expiring on 24 June, 2021.”
On May 8, 2018, former US President Donald Trump announced Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran and the introduction of the first package of sanctions against Iran. In response to the sanctions, Tehran abandoned its obligations under the nuclear agreement in2020 and increased the level of uranium enrichment.
Joe Biden, after coming to power in the United States, announced his intention to return to the nuclear deal on the condition that Iran will comply with all the terms of the agreement. Currently, the United States and Iran, with the participation of the 4 + 1 group, are holding indirect negotiations on a nuclear agreement in Vienna.
It’s a trap:
“The ideal scenario in this case would be that the United States and the international community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime reject it. In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context–both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer–one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians ‘brought it on themselves'” –“Which Path to Persia,” The Brookings Institution, p. 39
US must remove sanctions…if not Iran should produce nukes as a deterrent
In other words, Iran grabs its ankles again.