Iran has agreed to allow international nuclear inspectors to repair the surveillance cameras on its nuclear sites and install new memory cards into them so that they can continue filming and monitoring the sites.

This was announced by Mohammad Eslami of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The announcement came after a meeting he held with the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, in Tehran.

But the situation is still the same. Iran remains in possession of all recordings at its sites as negotiations over the US and Iran returning to the 2015 nuclear deal remain stalled in Vienna. Meanwhile, Iran is now enriching small amounts of uranium to its closest-ever levels to weapons-grade purity as its stockpile continues to grow, the Associated Press reported.

“We had a major, major communication breakdown with Iran, which, of course, is something we cannot afford, having so many important issues that we need to solve. And I think that was solved,” Grossi said on his return from Tehran

Eslami described the negotiations between Iran and the Vienna-based IAEA as “sheerly technical” without any room for politics. He said Grossi would return to Iran soon to talk with officials, without elaborating. Also left unsaid was whether Iran would hand over copies of the older recordings, which Tehran had threatened previously to destroy.

“The memory cards are sealed and kept in Iran, according to the routine. New memory cards will be installed in cameras. That is a routine and natural trend in the agency’s monitoring system,” Eslami said, according to AP.

IAEA and Iran confirmed the understanding in a joint statement, “The way and the timing are agreed by the two sides,” the statement said.

Grossi said the agreement would ensure “continuity of knowledge” that would ensure the watchdog can piece together the data it needs in the future.

“The reconstruction and the coming together of the jigsaw puzzle will come when there is an agreement at the JCPOA level. But at that time, we will have all this information and there will not have been a gap,” he said.

The announcement could buy time for Iran ahead of an IAEA board meeting this week in which Western powers had been arguing for Tehran to be censured over its lack of cooperation with international inspectors. Eslami said Iran would take part in that meeting and its negotiations with the IAEA would continue there.

The IAEA told member states in its confidential quarterly report last week that its verification and monitoring activities have been “seriously undermined” since February by Iran’s refusal to let inspectors access their monitoring equipment.