Iran rejects IAEA chief's call for new nuclear agreement after Biden takes office

Writing on Twitter, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, said, “There would be no renegotiation on the deal and in case of its revival, there is no necessity for a new document on the Agency’s role. It’s not needed to complicate the situation.”

Earlier, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that it was not possible for the two countries to revert to the original version of the JCPOA, signed in 2015, due to the numerous Iranian breaches of the agreement. 

“I cannot imagine that they are going simply to say, ‘We are back to square one’ because square one is no longer there,” Grossi told Reuters.

Both the Iranian leadership and the incoming Biden administration have expressed their desire to restart the Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018. 

However, Gharibabadi accused the IAEA of working beyond its remit saying, “Presenting any assessment on how the commitments are implemented (e.g referring to breach) is absolutely beyond the mandate of the Agency and should be avoided.”

Read more: What will happen to US 'maximum pressure' on Iran after the election?

Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has exceeded the limits for the purity of enriched uranium set out in the deal, but has still remained below the level of the uranium stockpile it held prior to the original deal in 2015. 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that should his country and the US restart the deal, then all step taken since its collapse are reversible, on the condition that the US lifts sanctions. 

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