IAEA Teams Visit Iran ‘Next Month’

A first IAEA team of judicial experts will go in the first week of August on a 48-hour mission to explain how the an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will work if Tehran signs, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

“The second team will carry out routine inspections ahead of a report on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the IAEA due to be released on September 8,” Fleming was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying.

The announcement came a day after Iran’s representative at the IAEA took the unusual step of urging his government to agree to surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities by the IAEA.

Ali Akbar Salehi said signing the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would help ease the pressure Tehran faced from the international community.

"The protocol has not been drawn up only for Iran or Third World countries. This is an international protocol and all the countries of the IAEA will accede to it sooner or later," Salehi said in an interview with Sunday’s state-run Iran newspaper.

We can use it to close the book on the politicized issue of our nuclear activities," he said.

He underlined that Tehran should take a "positive view" of the protocol, which allows IAEA experts to conduct more rigorous visits to nuclear sites at short notice.

The international community is pressing Tehran to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow the no-notice inspections, but so far Iran has not obliged.

Iran insists its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes, slamming all accusations of nuclear ambitions as baseless.