In an interview with Israel Radio, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Yukiya Amano said that no nuclear agreement will likely be reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations prior to the March deadline, The Times of Israel reported Saturday.

An agreement between Iran and the international community regarding the Islamic State’s nuclear program is unlikely to be signed before the March deadline for negotiations, chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano said Friday.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Amano added that the Islamic Republic had so far been unresponsive to a series of questions regarding its nuclear program and had failed to adequately address concerns over its alleged attempts to develop atomic weapons.

Iran had been obligated by the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) to account for the possible military dimensions of its past nuclear research. Iran’s failure to do so is the primary reason that Amano last month could not confirm that  Iran’s nuclear research was for “peaceful activities.”

In How a Weak Iran Deal Makes Us All Less Safe and War More Likely, which was published in the January 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Emanuele Ottoenghi observed:

[T]he interim deal has fatally undermined the NPT by watering down Iran’s compliance obligations, undercutting the IAEA’s authority in matters of verification, and ignoring the military dimensions of the program documented by the Agency, which are all at the heart of the dispute. In fact, if a final agreement were to emerge that fails to address the flaws present in the interim deal, including continued enrichment work, Iran would be able to break out under the cover of the NPT.

[Photo: IAEA Imagebank / Flickr ]