Iran on Sunday informed visiting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi that it would not grant access to its nuclear facilities to him or his organization, Press TV reported.
Grossi’s one-day visit is his first since Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi took office in August.
In late May, the IAEA and Iran agreed to extend until June 24 the technical monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which were due to expire on May 23. Since then, the IAEA has been prevented from accessing its surveillance cameras at nuclear sites in Iran, and Tehran threatened to erase all the data from said cameras.
Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran’s representative to the international organizations in Vienna, said on Saturday that Grossi would hold talks with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, to be followed by a joint statement.
A source inside Iran’s atomic energy apparatus told Press TV: “The talks during the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s visit to Tehran will only be about servicing some of the agency’s monitoring equipment and there is no other issue on the agenda.”
The source explained that Grossi’s visit has nothing to do with the restrictions imposed by Iran on the IAEA concerning its access to the camera footage at Iran’s nuclear facilities.