The monitoring deal between Iran and the IAEA expired Thursday, and seems like it might well stay expired for awhile, with Iran’s parliament speaker saying that Iran will not cooperate on data sharing while the deal is not in effect.
Iran made a monitoring deal with the IAEA in February, which lasted for three months.. The hope was to carry through to a new nuclear deal. This unfortunately didn’t happen, as the deal expired in May. Iran accepted another month extension, which was the one through last week.
Iran’s outgoing Rouhani government didn’t want to extend into the new government’s term. The new government is trying to define its own relationship with the IAEA, and seems to be more interested in deals with the other P5+1 nations on the JCPOA, rather than worrying about the monitoring deal.
Though the speaker seemed to reject the idea of another interim monitoring deal, it’s not clear that the Raisi government is precluding that idea. Rather, it’s not a priority, and replacing it with a restored nuclear deal, which would come with its own monitoring, seems to be preferred.
In that regard, officials say the ball is in the US’ corner, as the terms are mostly agreed to, and its just a matter of the US accepting the sanctions relief they promised six years ago but never delivered in. If the US does that, things would be fixed quickly. If the US isn’t going to, a new monitoring deal is neither here nor there, and a deal isn’t coming.
The monitoring deals were always meant to buy time for the JCPOA negotiations, and at this point they’ve bought all the time they need to, putting the onus on the JCPOA negotiators to come through.
Jason, forgot to mention that the monitoring deal was a volunteering act on part of Iran and was never a requirement in the first place…!