IAEA delegation arrives in Tehran for new nuclear negotiations

A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Tehran on Sunday.

On the agenda of the five-member IAEA team are new negotiations with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) as well as representatives of the Foreign Ministry, AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said.

There is a realistic hope that the remaining differences with the UN nuclear agency will be clarified and resolved in Tehran, the spokesperson said, according to the Tasnim news agency.

In the negotiations, the IAEA is mainly concerned with explanations about three sites in Iran where traces of nuclear material have been found that point to clandestine activities in the past.

Tehran has denied all accusations in this regard, claiming that its nuclear projects are peaceful and that the country is not pursuing a secret weapons programme.

On the other hand, Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami announced on Saturday that the country's uranium enrichment capacity was larger than ever before in the history of Iran's nuclear industry.

According to observers in Tehran, the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West are at an impasse.

Even if a technical agreement were to be reached with the IAEA, there would be no breakthrough in the nuclear dispute. The reason for this is the brutal repression of anti-regime protests, which has been condemned in the strongest terms in the West and has also led to new sanctions being imposed on the Islamic country.

After the U.S. unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, Tehran began to break the restrictions agreed in the deal and make IAEA inspections more difficult.

Currently, Iran is enriching uranium to a purity level of 60%. According to IAEA data, this is not significantly below the 90% needed for nuclear weapons.

Iran claims that it is technically capable of enriching uranium to a purity of 90%. According to the 2015 Vienna nuclear deal, Iran is not allowed to enrich its uranium above 4%.