Iran Making Efforts To Fulfill Nuclear Commitments As Deadline Looms: Report

With just over a month left for a self-imposed deadline to reach a long-term nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, said on Monday that Iran is “meeting its commitments” under a short-term deal reached in 2013, according a Reuters report.

The international nuclear watchdog said, in a report seen by Reuters, that Iran had diluted about 9,000 pounds of enriched uranium down to the level of natural uranium, and that the country was making further efforts to comply with the terms of the interim nuclear agreement.

The temporary accord came into effect in January and was extended for four months in July after Iran and the six world powers -- the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United Kingdom -- failed to reach a comprehensive long-term agreement. Under the deal, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear activities in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union.

The report by IAEA, which is responsible for overseeing whether Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement, comes just a week after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that a nuclear deal with the West is “certain” by the self-imposed Nov. 24 deadline.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Iran’s Mehr News Agency quoted senior Iranian officials who claimed that they had extracted major concessions from the U.S. during the ongoing nuclear talks. The report said that the U.S. has agreed to allow Iran to keep up to 4,000 active centrifuges -- a significant climbdown by the U.S., which had previously insisted that no more than 1,300 centrifuges should be left operating in the country.