In something of a diplomatic breakthrough today, the U.K., France, and Germany (the “E3") dropped a draft resolution at the meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency that would have condemned Iran for reducing its cooperation with the agency’s inspectors and that would have demanded that Iran answer questions about traces of uranium which inspectors reportedly found at two undeclared locations in Tehran. The scrapping of the resolution followed an agreement between Iran and the IAEA for a technical meeting to take place in Tehran in early April.
“We are trying to sit down around the table and see if we can resolve this once and for all,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Vienna during a hastily called press conference, outlining a process that will start next month. “We are going to be starting this process of focused analysis of the situation with a technical meeting which will take place in Iran at the beginning of April, which I hope will be followed by other technical or political meetings.”
A French diplomatic source told reporters that the resolution had been put on hold because the E3 believed they had won concessions allowing Grossi to work on the outstanding issues, and because it would have harmed the prospects of a meeting between Iran, the United States, and other parties to the deal, reported Reuters. “If we had gone through with the vote [on a resolution] it would have made it more difficult to quickly start this meeting,” the source told reporters. “Cooler heads are prevailing,” said a diplomat from a country on the board that was skeptical of the resolution.
