IAEA chief visits Iran’s sensitive military site

Diplomats had stated Fri.in that Yukiya Amano of the U.N.’s global Atomic Energy Agency was planning such a visit.

He also met Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani as well as atomic agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi. Amano says he has reached a deal with Iran on probing suspected work on nuclear weapons and adds that the agreement will “be signed quite soon”.

Earlier this week, IAEA spokesman Fredrik Dahl said that Amano could visit Iran to discuss the implementation of a nuclear deal between Tehran and the worldwide negotiators.

“IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano will travel to Tehran today for meetings with high-level Iranian officials on Sunday, 20 September”, the IAEA said in a statement.

Rouhani said the US has wrongly imprisoned Iranian citizens for circumventing sanctions.

For years, Iran denied access to IAEA personnel, insisting Parchin was strictly military in nature and would not be opened up to outsiders. The draft said that Iranian experts, monitored by video and still cameras, would gather environmental samples at the site and hand them over to the agency for analysis.

The IAEA chief was in Tehran ahead of a December 15 deadline to resolve “ambiguities” about possible past military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Tehran has always maintained that the program was meant for peaceful applications like power generation and cancer treatment. The Additional Protocol provides for expanded IAEA safeguards, including snap inspections of nuclear sites.

Amano said Sunday that his agency’s work in Iran and elsewhere is “based on impartiality”.

Rouhani, meanwhile, told U.S. media that most Iranians “have a positive view” of the nuclear deal, and that it would likely be ratified.

Iran must cooperate with the investigation in order to get sanctions on the country lifted as part of a broader nuclear agreement between Iran and six major powers.