TEHRAN - The UN's atomic watchdog says it is willing to make a deal on inspections with Iran's new leadership that could renew nuclear diplomacy with Tehran, the National reported on Monday.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has spoken to Iran's acting chief diplomat since a helicopter crash killed its president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on May 19.

Diplomats told AFP that Britain, France and Germany will seek to censure Iran over its cooperation with the IAEA at its board meeting from Monday despite US opposition.

Diplomats said submitting a motion against Iran at the Vienna meeting was driven by an “urgency to react to the gravity of the situation”.

The planned resolution comes after the IAEA board passed the last one of its kind in November 2022.

Iran has also signaled it will respond if the European trio and the US push a new resolution through the IAEA's board.

Grossi said any wider resumption of talks, such as a new version of the 2015 deal that lifted sanctions on Iran, would need the IAEA to have full oversight.

It is hoped that "at some point there will be a return to diplomacy, a return to a general framework, call it JCPOA version two, or version three, or any other name", he said.

"For that to happen, the agency will have to be able to say what the basis is, and what I have been explaining to my Iranian counterparts is that if I am not able, I won’t.

"I will not sign on any report saying that Iran has a number of centrifuges, or parts for centrifuges, if I cannot see [them]."

Grossi visited Tehran in early May to discuss how the IAEA could have "more access, more visibility" at Iranian sites.

A team of IAEA technical experts was sent to Tehran last month to discuss further details but had to pack its bags after the helicopter crash on May 19.