According to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, a “step in the right direction” was taken in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program on Sunday.

Grossi traveled to Tehran at short notice on Sunday for talks with the new head of the Iranian nuclear program, Mohammad Eslami.

In the past three months, in which a new political leadership was installed in Iran under President Raisi, there has been a "major communication breakdown".

At least that has now been resolved, said the IAEA Director General on Saturday evening after returning from the Iranian capital in a provisionally convened press conference at Vienna Airport.

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

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For a quarter of a year, the nuclear activities in Iran, which can advance the country towards the construction of atomic bombs, have been more or less in the dark for the responsible watchdog of the international community, and information has been limited since the beginning of the year. In the end, the IAEA was dependent on information from Tehran and conclusions from its previous findings and from more or less open sources such as commercial satellites in order to carry out its tasks. The outgoing Iranian previous government had already ended the intensive controls by the IAEA, as agreed in the nuclear agreement of 2015, at the beginning of this year under pressure from the conservative hardliners in parliament. A provisional interim solution expired in June.IAEA Director General Grossi did not hold back criticizing this situation when he informed the representatives of the international community on the supervisory body of the Vienna-based UN organization, the Board of Governors, on a regular basis last week.

"Communication breakdown"

The 2015 Vienna Atomic Energy Agreement, the so-called JCPOA, not only provided for Iran to apply the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, like most countries in the world. This includes unannounced and intensive controls of nuclear activities - which in principle every IAEA member state is permitted for peaceful purposes and is even supported by the organization. Iran went through even more extensive controls in the JCPOA, such as constant monitoring of its enrichment sites with cameras, the images of which the IAEA had access to. But after the United States under former President Donald Trump unilaterally terminated its obligations under the JCPOA to end sanctions in 2018, Iran gradually stopped fulfilling its obligations.The enrichment activity has since been ramped up considerably, the possibilities of control restricted - up to the "communication breakdown", as Grossi put it.