“This year, we will witness breakthroughs in the [nuclear] issue in the coming months,” AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
“As I had previously announced, we are very optimistic about the process that has started to resolve the nuclear issue, and we expect that we will see the beginning of a trend in the coming months to settle the nuclear issue,” he said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Iran’s nuclear chief described his recent meeting with Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano as very positive.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 57th IAEA General Conference in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Monday.
Iran and the IAEA are slated to hold another round of talks over Tehran’s nuclear energy program on September 27 in Vienna.
Amano said on September 9 that the agency “remains committed to working constructively with Iran, under the country's new government, to resolve outstanding issues by diplomatic means.”
On September 13, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Tehran has always respected international regulations in its nuclear energy program, stressing, “Iran wants nothing beyond what is defined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regarding the nuclear [rights] of countries.”
The United States, Israel and some of their allies falsely claim that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program, with the US and the European Union using the unfounded allegation as a pretext to impose illegal sanctions on Iran.
Tehran strongly rejects the claim, maintaining that as a committed signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence showing that the Iranian nuclear program has been diverted toward non-civilian objectives.