IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on February 16 that he had completed "in-depth technical discussions" with Iran's foreign minister Araghchi as a preparatory step ahead of fresh talks in Geneva on February 17. The exchange, posted on Grossi's social media, underlines the International Atomic Energy Agency's hands-on role in ironing out verification and monitoring details before political negotiators meet.
Iran's foreign ministry announced on February 15 that Araghchi would lead an Iranian diplomatic and technical delegation to Geneva for a second round of indirect nuclear negotiations with the United States on February 17. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that two presidential envoys — named in Iranian reporting as Witkoff and Jared Kushner — would represent Washington in the indirect talks, mirroring the format used in the first round in Muscat on February 6.
The involvement of the IAEA at this preparatory stage is significant because the agency provides the technical blueprint around which political agreements must be built. Grossi's discussions with Iran are likely to have focused on verification mechanics — how inspections are conducted, what access looks like, timelines for monitoring enriched uranium and any measures to prevent breakout — rather than the high politics of sanctions relief and regional security guarantees.
That technical focus reflects the structure and limits of the current diplomatic channel. The Muscat meeting produced agreement only to continue dialogue; both sides still publicly acknowledge large gaps on core issues. For Washington and Tehran alike, negotiators face a familiar sequencing problem: Iran demands sanctions relief before irreversible concessions on the nuclear program, while the United States and its partners seek verifiable rollbacks and long-term constraints before easing pressure.
The Geneva meeting, framed as indirect talks, reduces the political exposure of principals on both sides but also complicates trust-building. Bringing the IAEA into preparatory conversations can lower some technical obstacles and create draft verification language that political teams can debate. Yet technical alignment does not bridge the deeper strategic and domestic constraints that will determine whether talks produce an interim deal, a roadmap to a broader accord, or another stalemate.
The coming days will test whether technical convergence — on monitoring, access and verification — can be translated into political compromise. If Grossi and the IAEA succeed in settling technical modalities, negotiators in Geneva will still need to resolve sequencing, sanctions architecture and the role of regional security issues. Failure to reach that higher-level bargain would leave technical agreements isolated and unlikely to alter current trajectories in Tehran or Washington.