The chief of the
U.N. atomic watchdog said on Monday he was confident following a visit
to Washington of "very good cooperation" with the United States on
Iran's nuclear deal, despite President Donald Trump's hawkish comments, according to Reuters.
The
2015 agreement between Iran and major powers restricts Tehran's nuclear
activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic
Republic, but Trump has called it "the worst deal ever negotiated" and
said he wants to "police that contract so tough (the Iranians) don't
have a chance".
"I am
confident that we can have very good cooperation with the United States
in the future," Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), told a news conference in Vienna.
Amano
met U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington last Thursday.
During his confirmation hearing Tillerson had called for a "full review"
of the deal, which extends the time Iran would need to produce a
nuclear weapon if it chose to.
Since
Trump took office in January, however, his administration has given
little indication of what concrete stance it will take on the Iran
agreement.
Neither the
IAEA nor the U.S. State Department commented on the content of last
week's meetings, which were Amano's first with senior members of the
Trump administration.
Amano's remarks on
Monday, the first day of a quarterly meeting of the IAEA board of
governors, were the first indication of how the talks in Washington had
gone, though he did not provide specific details on what Tillerson told
him.
"With
respect to Iran I made the point that the JCPOA is a net gain from the
verification point of view because now we have the strongest
verification regime in Iran, while the nuclear activities of Iran are
reduced," Amano said, calling the deal by its full name, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action.
"The
new administration of the United States just started and they are
looking at various issues - not just this issue but many other issues,
so it is very early for them to give their assessment," he added.
