Iran allows UN access to alleged nuclear sites

Iran has agreed to allow the UN watchdog the access it has requested to two alleged nuclear sites, as the head of the agency ended his first visit to Tehran.

The announcement came only hours after Iran's arch foe the United States suffered a humiliating defeat when the United Nations blocked its controversial bid to reimpose international sanctions on the Islamic republic.

The US move had threatened to torpedo a historic 2015 accord under which Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

The deal known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been hanging by a thread since US President Donald Trump's unilateral decision to withdraw from it in 2018.

Iran has retaliated by gradually reducing its commitments to the JCPOA ever since.

But it agreed on Wednesday to grant the International Atomic Energy Agency the access it has sought to two sites that were suspected of having hosted undeclared activity in the early 2000s.

The announcement came at the end of IAEA director general Rafael Grossi's first visit to Iran since the Argentine took the post last year.

On return to Vienna, where the IAEA is based, Grossi told reporters that inspectors would visit the sites "very, very soon". He said he could not reveal the exact dates.

In their statement, the two sides said the agreement followed "intensive bilateral consultations" and that the IAEA had no further access requests.

The IAEA's board of governors had passed a resolution in late June put forward by Britain, France and Germany, urging Tehran to provide inspectors access to the two disputed sites.

According to the spokesman for Iran's nuclear body, one of the two is located in central Iran between Isfahan and Yazd provinces, and the other is close to Tehran.