IAEA says Feruta will travel to Tehran ‘for meetings with high-level Iranian officials on Sunday’.

The acting head of the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will travel to Iran this weekend to meet high-level officials.

The IAEA said in a statement on Friday that acting Director General Cornel Feruta “will travel to Tehran on Saturday for meetings with high-level Iranian officials on Sunday”.

“The visit is part of ongoing interactions between the IAEA and Iran,” the statement said, adding that this included “the IAEA’s verification and monitoring in Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)”, the name for the 2015 deal with world powers over Iran’s nuclear programme.

On Saturday, Iranian officials are expected to announce details of the third round of cuts in nuclear commitments under the JCPOA, which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Wednesday, and said it will affect “the field of research and development”.

Feruta reported last week that Iran’s stock of enriched uranium has significantly surpassed the limits set by the pact and that it has continued to enrich uranium at a higher purity grade than allowed.

The nuclear deal – agreed on by Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US and the European Union – gave Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for accepting curbs on its nuclear programme.

Tensions between Iran and the other parties to the deal have spiralled since the US unilaterally pulled out in 2018 and reinstated crippling economic sanctions.