IAEA headquarters
IAEA headquartersiStock

Reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under US President-elect Joe Biden would require a new agreement setting out how Iran’s breaches should be reversed, the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog said on Thursday.

In an interview with Reuters, Rafael Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said there had been too many breaches for the agreement to simply fall back into place.

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

“There is more (nuclear) material, ... there is more activity, there are more centrifuges, and more are being announced. So what happens with all this? This is the question for them at the political level to decide,” added Grossi.

Asked if that meant there would have to be a “deal within the deal”, he replied, “Oh yes, oh yes. Undoubtedly.”

“It is clear that there will have to be a protocol or an agreement or an understanding or some ancillary document which will stipulate clearly what we do,” continued Grossi.

Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018.

The IAEA recently released a report which found that Iran has fired up advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges that it had installed at its Natanz site in violation of the 2015 agreement.

In a previous report, the UN agency said that the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of enriched uranium now stands at more than ten times the limit set down in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Biden has taken a different approach to the Iran deal than Trump and has expressed a desire to rejoin the deal. He recently told The New York Times that he would do so if Iran returned to compliance with it.

The European signatories to the deal - Britain, France and Germany – have been trying to save the agreement since Trump withdrew from it. However, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas earlier this month called for negotiations with Iran to conclude a broader nuclear deal.