TEHRAN: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran would begin offering its inspectors less access, but would still allow the agency to monitor its atomic programme.

Rafael Grossi made the comments on arrival in Vienna from Tehran. He was careful to say that there still would be the same number of inspectors, but there would be “things we lose”.

He did not offer many specifics, but Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that would include blocking the International Atomic Energy Agency from accessing footage on its cameras at nuclear sites.

In Tehran, Grossi met Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme. Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, later tweeted that Iran and the IAEA held fruitful discussions based on mutual respect.

Iran's parliament in December approved a bill that would suspend part of UN inspections of its nuclear facilities if European signatories do not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions by Tuesday.

Grossi had made the trip to Tehran as Iran tries to pressure Europe and the new Biden administration into returning to the 2015 nuclear deal, which President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from in 2018.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who under President Hassan Rouhani helped reach the nuclear deal, said the cameras of the International Atomic Energy Agency would be shut off despite Grossi’s visit to follow a law passed by parliament.

“This is not a deadline for the world. This is not an ultimatum,” Zarif told the government-run, English-language broadcaster Press TV in an interview aired before he met Grossi. “This is an internal domestic issue between the parliament and the government.

We have a democracy. We are supposed to implement the laws of the country. And the parliament adopted legislation whether we like it or not.”

Zarif’s comments marked the highest-level acknowledgement yet of what Iran planned to do when it stopped following the “additional protocol”, a confidential agreement between Tehran and the IAEA reached as part of the nuclear deal. The IAEA has additional protocols with a number of countries it monitors.

Under the protocol with Iran, the IAEA collects and analyses hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by its sophisticated surveillance cameras, the agency said in 2017. The agency also said then that it had placed 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment.

In his interview, Zarif said authorities would be required by law not to provide the tapes of those cameras. It wasn’t immediately clear if that also meant the cameras would be turned off entirely as Zarif called that a technical decision, that’s not a political decision.

The IAEA certainly will not get footage from those cameras, Zarif said.

There are 18 nuclear facilities and nine other locations in Iran under IAEA safeguards.

In Washington, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden remained willing to negotiate with Iran over a return to the nuclear deal, an offer earlier dismissed by Zarif.

“He is prepared to go to the table to talk to the Iranians about how we get strict constraints back on their nuclear programme,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation. “That offer still stands, because we believe diplomacy is the best way to do it.”

On US citizens being held by Iran, Sullivan added: We have begun to communicate with the Iranians on this issue.”

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2021