Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency [confirmed in a statement](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/multimedia/videos/statement-by-iaea-director-general-on-iran ) to the IAEA Board of Governors yesterday that the agency had signed an agreement with Iran in Cairo, Egypt on Sept. 9 for resuming cooperation under Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. He noted that cooperation had been halted since the June attacks on Iranian nuclear installations had “led to an inevitable suspension of the inspection work in Iran. Complete.”
“Resuming this indispensable work would not be an automatic, or a simple bureaucratic process, after what happened,” Grossi said. “On top of this, as you all know, the Parliament of Iran adopted a law to suspend cooperation with the Agency. This risked putting us before the real possibility of Iran failing to observe and comply with its safeguards obligations.”
“Iran expressed concerns, and it is our duty as an international organization to listen to those, and find ways and means to address them in a form which would reconcile two equally important parameters: Iran’s new law, and the existing legal obligations emanating from the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT safeguards agreement,” Grossi continued. “This required dialogue and a thorough understanding of Iran’s views.”
The agreement is a technical document and won’t be made public, he explained, but it means, among other things, that “Iran and the Agency will now resume cooperation in a respectful and comprehensive way.”
