TEHRAN: Iran has played down the return of UN nuclear inspectors, saying it does not mean full cooperation has resumed. 

Officials hinted instead at a “new form” of working with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), weeks after ties were frozen in the wake of deadly Israeli and US strikes at the nuclear sites in the country in June earlier this year.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency began work at the key nuclear site of Bushehr in southwestern Iran, the nuclear watchdog’s chief, Rafael Grossi, said, the first team to enter the country since Tehran formally suspended cooperation with the UN agency last month.

“No final text has yet been approved on the new cooperation framework with the IAEA, and views are being exchanged,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, quoted by state television.

The agency’s inspectors left Iran after Israel launched its unprecedented attack on June 13, striking nuclear and military facilities as well as residential areas and killing more than 1,000 people.

Washington later joined in with strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks that killed dozens in Israel. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel has been in place since June 24.

Iran subsequently suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency’s failure to condemn the Israeli and US attacks.

But on Wednesday, Grossi said the inspectors were “there now”, adding: “Today they are inspecting Bushehr.”

Under the law suspending cooperation, inspectors may access Iranian nuclear sites only with the approval of the country’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.

Tehran has said repeatedly that future cooperation with the agency will take “a new form”.

The spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said the IAEA inspectors would oversee the replacement of fuel at the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

He made no mention of whether inspectors would be allowed access to other sites, including Fordo and Natanz, which were hit during the war.

‘Litmus test’

Grossi, on a visit to Washington, said discussions about inspecting other sites were underway with no immediate agreement.

“We are continuing the conversation so that we can go to all places, including the facilities that have been impacted,” he said.

He said that Iran cannot restrict inspectors only to “non-attacked facilities.”

“There is no such thing as a la carte inspection work.”

The return of inspectors came after Iranian diplomats held talks with counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva on Tuesday.

Their second round of talks since the Israeli attacks included discussion of European threats to trigger the reimposition of UN sanctions against Iran before they are permanently lifted in mid-October.

The window for triggering the so-called “snapback mechanism” of a moribund 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers closes on October 18.

During their previous meeting with Iran in July, the three European powers suggested extending the snapback deadline if Tehran resumed negotiations with the US and cooperation with the IAEA, the Financial Times reported.

Iran later dismissed the Europeans’ right to extend the deadline, and said it was working with its allies, China and Russi, to prevent the reimposition of sanctions.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Karim Gharibabadi on Wednesday said that if the snapback is triggered, “the path of interaction that we have now opened with the International Atomic Energy Agency will also be completely affected and will probably stop.”

On Tuesday, Russia circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at pushing back the deadline for triggering snapback sanctions by six months, according to the text seen by AFP.

The Russian proposal does not set preconditions for the deadline extension.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said that the updated proposal was designed to “give more breathing space for diplomacy”, adding that he hoped it “will be acceptable”.

“It will be kind of a litmus test for those who really want to uphold diplomatic efforts, and for those who don’t want any diplomatic solution, but just want to pursue their own nationalist, selfish agendas against Iran,” he told the media.

At least 25 people were killed and 27 injured when a bus overturned in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, authorities told AFP, a week after the country’s deadliest road accident in years.

The crash happened “due to the driver’s negligence” on a highway near the capital Kabul leading to the southern city of Kandahar, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said.

Qani said 25 people were killed and 27 were being treated at hospitals for injuries, the extent of which was not specified.

Deadly traffic crashes are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.

Last Tuesday, 78 people, including more than a dozen children, were killed in western Herat province when a bus carrying migrants returning from Iran collided with a motorcycle and a truck, according to authorities.

In December last year, two bus accidents involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52.

Extreme rainfall across swathes of China caused over 16 billion yuan ($2.24 billion) in road damage, the transport ministry said on Wednesday, highlighting how climate risks are placing additional pressure on the ailing economy’s public purse.

The preliminary estimate covers damage to roads since the start of flood season, Li Ying, a ministry spokesperson, told reporters, and includes 23 provinces, regions and municipalities — more than two-thirds of China’s administrative divisions.

Flood season officially began on July 1, according to China’s water resources ministry, and brought record rainfall to the country’s north and south.

So far, some 540 million yuan in emergency road repair subsidies have been allocated to local authorities by the transport and finance ministries, Li said.

The government has allocated 5.8 billion yuan in fresh funding for disaster relief since April, with flooding, landslides, earthquakes and drought having led to direct economic losses worth 52.2 billion yuan in the month of July alone, according to China’s Ministry of Emergency Management.

China’s heavily indebted local governments — already wrestling with trillions of dollars in liabilities — are ill-equipped to absorb mounting climate-relate damages.

This adds to the pressure on fiscally-stretched administrators to find ways of paying for public services, supporting local firms and job creation.