BICOM

Diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) do not expect significant progress to be made during talks with Iranian officials due to take place in Vienna on Wednesday.

This week’s talks will be the tenth round of meetings between the two sides since the start of 2012, with the IAEA no closer to securing access to the sites, documents and personnel necessary to carry out an inquiry into Iran’s nuclear development. In particular, the IAEA has been frustrated by Iran’s refusal to allow inspectors access to the Parchin plant, where it is suspected nuclear ballistic tests may have been carried out. Tehran insists that a complex framework to the investigation must first be agreed.

With the two sides set to meet in Vienna, a Western diplomat based in the Austrian capital told Reuters that there is “no reason at all for optimism.” Another unnamed diplomat in Vienna told Xinhua news agency “Our expectation is still low, there is no indication that Iran would make any substantial deal with IAEA.”

However, Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh yesterday struck a different tone, commenting “We have the meeting with the expectation of progress of course… We are serious in these talks.”

Wednesday’s talks come ahead of the publication of the latest IAEA quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear programme. The IAEA’s previous assessment concluded that Iran has not reduced its uranium enrichment over the previous three months and that it has installed new advanced centrifuges at the Natanz plant. Meanwhile, the parallel diplomatic track between Iran and the so-called P5+1 powers – United States, UK, China, Russia, France and Germany – who are tasked with leading the international effort to resolve concerns over Tehran’s nuclear programme, reached an impasse at a meeting in Kazakhstan last month.