Iranian parliament speaker Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that a three-month monitoring deal between Tehran and the UN nuclear watchdog had expired as of Saturday, Iran's state TV reported, adding that the agency would no longer access images of nuclear sites.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, is to hold a news conference on Sunday afternoon.
He is in talks with Iran on extending the monitoring arrangement that could affect negotiations between Tehran and six powers in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the IAEA said.
Under what is called an “Additional Protocol” with Iran, the IAEA “collects and analyzes hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by its sophisticated surveillance cameras,” the agency said in 2017. The agency also said then that it had placed “2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment.”
"From May 22 and with the end of the three-month agreement, the agency will have no access to data collected by cameras inside the nuclear facilities agreed under the agreement," state TV quoted Qalibaf as saying.
Iran began gradually breaching terms of the pact with world powers after then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.
The pact aims to keep Iran from being able to make nuclear arms, which Tehran says it has never wanted to build.
In February, the watchdog and Iran agreed to keep “necessary” IAEA monitoring and verification activities, although Tehran would reduce cooperation with the agency, including by ending snap inspections.
