News - Middle East: The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says he is willing to continue to work with the next government in Iran.

In an address to the IAEA Board of Governors on Monday, Rafael Grossi expressed hope that high-level dialogue and ensuing technical exchanges that were agreed during his trip to Iran in early May could continue under the country’s new government.

Grossi reiterated that late Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Iran’s top nuclear official Mohamamd Eslami had agreed to his proposals for implementing a joint statement announced on March 4, 2023 to address the outstanding issues between the IAEA and Tehran.

Iranians are scheduled to go to polls for snap presidential vote on June 28. The election's winner will replace the late Ebrahim Raisi, who lost his life in a helicopter crash with seven others, including his foreign minister, earlier this month.

In his Monday remarks, Grossi repeated his previous claims about lack of cooperation on Iran’s side on certain issues, including its refusal to allow several Agency inspectors to continue to carry out missions in Iranian nuclear sites.

He also claimed that Iran has yet to provide the IAEA with “technically credible explanations” about the presence of uranium particles at two of its nuclear sites.

Iran and world powers reached a landmark nuclear agreement in 2015 under which Tehran curbed parts of its nuclear program in exchange for removal of sanctions imposed on the country’s economy.

Tehran started to suspend some of its obligations under the agreement in 2019 a year after a former government in the United States abandoned the deal and reinstated sanctions on Iran.

Iran then agreed to some additional IAEA inspections under the Joint Statement and resolved issues related to one of the three sites and the alleged presence of uranium particles there.