Iran Press/ Europe: UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi canceled a news conference planned for Tuesday evening upon his return from Tehran, where he held talks with Iranian officials over the country's nuclear program, Reuters cites the IAEA spokesman as saying.
The director-general will hold a separate news conference on Wednesday at 1230 (1130 GMT) as previously announced on the opening day of the quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation Board of Governors.
After 13 years of intensive international negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was concluded on July 14, 2015. One week later, UN Security Council ratified Resolution No. 2231 and attached it to Annex A of the resolution.
Yet, after Donald Trump took office as the US President in January 2017 and took a few preliminary steps to fulfill the deal, he unilaterally withdrew from the agreement on May 8, 2018, and introduced the harshest sanctions in history against Iran in line with his "Maximum pressure" campaign against the Islamic Republic.
In a counter-sanctions measure, Iran's Supreme National Security Council started a series of scale-backs measures to stop the implementation of voluntary commitments to the JCPOA within the framework of the same deal.
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Iran has repeatedly stated that if the other parties remaining in the JCPOA decide to implement their obligations in accordance with the agreement, it will stop the scale-backs.
Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA started talks in April in Vienna to revive the deal. The US, under the Joe Biden administration, was also participating in the Vienna talks indirectly.
Six rounds of talks were held until June. However, the talks failed to produce a breakthrough as the United States raised new issues not related to the original JCPOA. For example, the US. tried to include Iran’s missile program and its regional policies in a possible revitalization of the multilateral agreement. Moreover, the Biden administration also tried to extend Iran’s nuclear program limits, which will be automatically lifted in the future years.
Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to put limits on its nuclear activities to terminate economic and financial sanctions.
Rafael Grossi arrived in Tehran on Monday night for a two-day visit and met with Mohammad Eslami, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
He came to Tehran to bring the IAEA's cooperation with Iran into line first and then reactivate the nuclear talks between Iran and the major powers to discuss sanctions against Iran.
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