VIENNA, June 7./TASS/. The IAEA Board of Governors has completed a review of its agreement with Iran on the application of safeguards in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said on Wednesday.
"The IAEA Board of Governors has completed consideration of NPT Safeguards Agreement with Iran. One of the main dividing lines in the course of the debate was a dispute, if ‘the glass is half full or half empty’. The answer depended on subjective feelings of the speakers," Ulyanov said in a tweet.
Earlier, Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, stated that the criteria for Iran to implement its nuclear program are the provisions of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the guarantees provided under it and the Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Protect Iranian Nation's Interest passed by the Majlis (parliament).
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed by Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, and France) and Germany in 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under the total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for the abandonment of the previously imposed sanctions by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program.
The future of the deal was called into question after the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in May 2018. The United States’ current president, Joe Biden, had repeatedly signaled that Washington was ready to return to the nuclear deal but talks on the restoration of the agreement effectively ended in the spring of 2022 after relations between the US and Iran became strained.
Since April 2021, Russia, Britain, Germany, China, the United States and France have been in talks with Iran in the city of Vienna in an effort to restore the JCPOA to its original form. On November 10, 2022, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that another round of talks with Iranian representatives had ended in the Austrian capital city without any result.