TEHRAN — A group of UN inspectors visited a key uranium mine in southern Iran on Wednesday, as part of a deal to allow expanded monitoring of the country’s nuclear sites.
A spokesman for Iran’s nuclear program, Behrouz Kamalvandi, told the official IRNA news agency that the three-member team from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency inspected the Gachin uranium mine, near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.
Iran and the agency struck a deal in November granting inspectors wider access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The deal was parallel to an agreement reached with world powers in Geneva to have Iran halt its most sensitive uranium enrichment activities in return for an easing of Western sanctions over its controversial nuclear program.
Kamalvandi said UN inspectors were given a ‘‘managed access’’ to Gachin site. The term refers to a level of scrutiny that provides IAEA inspectors with access to data while at the same time allows the host country to protect some information.
Next to the Gachin uranium mine is an associated mill that turns the mined uranium into uranium ore concentrate, a powder known as yellowcake. The processing is part of the early stages before actual enrichment of uranium.
In the past, the UN nuclear watchdog agency has questioned whether the Gachin facility was linked to alleged possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.
‘‘The main purpose of inspecting the Gachin mine is to calculate its existing stockpile of uranium and probe to see whether Iran has withdrawn undeclared materials and injected them into an undeclared process or not,’’ the nuclear news website, irannuc.ir, reported Wednesday.