"The current situation is totally unsatisfactory. We are almost in a stalemate (...) and this has to change," Rafael Grossi stressed, in statements to journalists at Vienna airport, upon arriving for a two-day visit to Tehran, where he sought to "resume commitments" with the Iranians.

"We want results and we want them soon, and I think [the Iranian officials] also understood that," he added.

The Argentine diplomat stressed that the international community expects answers from Iran "sooner rather than later".

Grossi travelled to Iran this Monday, with the aim of strengthening the supervision of Tehran's nuclear activities, after months of little progress.

Still in Iran, Rafael Grossi had highlighted that the IAEA and Tehran were negotiating the implementation of the 2023 agreement to extend inspections to the Iranian nuclear programme.

In 2023, Tehran offered ample guarantees to the IAEA to clarify long-standing questions about man-made uranium particles found at undeclared sites and to reinstall monitoring equipment, but little progress has been made on these commitments.

The director-general of the UN agency refused to give specific details in Vienna about what was negotiated due to the sensitivity of the matter and because some of these measures are voluntary.

But he indicated that part of the negotiations were about the level of uranium enrichment and access to nuclear facilities.

Currently, Iran enriches uranium with up to 60% purity, according to data from the UN's own nuclear agency, and is approaching the 90% needed to build an atomic bomb.

The negotiations between the IAEA and the Islamic Republic are taking place in a context of great regional tension due to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Grossi visited Isfahan today, which hosts a large part of the Iranian nuclear programme and which suffered an attack last month, attributed to Israel, without causing damage to the nuclear facilities.

Relations between Iran and the IAEA have deteriorated since Tehran stopped respecting the commitments made in the 2015 nuclear deal, in response to the United States' withdrawal from the pact in 2018, during the presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021).

Since then, Tehran has reduced inspections, violated uranium enrichment levels and stockpiled quantities of this raw material, turned off security cameras and banned several UN inspectors.

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