The United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said on Wednesday that there had been “no progress” in talks with Tehran on disputes over the monitoring of Iran’s atomic program.
The remarks came just days before talks restart on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a quarterly meeting of the agency’s board that talks he held in Tehran on Tuesday were “inconclusive,” despite being “constructive.”
“In terms of the substance… we were not able to make progress,” Grossi told reporters, saying that the lack of agreement had come “despite my best efforts.”
For his part, Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iranian television his team “tried until the last moment” but there is still work to be done.
Iran has blocked the IAEA from fully monitoring nuclear activities in recent months. The move prompted Grossi to visit Tehran in September to conduct talks with top officials.
After Grossi's visit, the IAEA said it had been denied "indispensable" access to a centrifuge component-manufacturing workshop where it wanted to service monitoring equipment such as cameras, despite an earlier agreement.
