Obama openness may help IAEA with Iran

El Baradei said uncertainty about Iran's future plans was a key concern. "I think right now we have a stalemate in the Iranian situation," he said.

"We are able to verify all their declared activities, we are able to verify their enrichment programme, which is a good thing. But we are still not able to move forward on clarifying some of the outstanding issues related to alleged studies that could have some linkage to a possible military dimension."

Iran says its nuclear plans are to make electricity so it can export more oil and gas.

"There is a lot of concern about Iran, not today but about Iran in future... whether once they develop the technology, what are they going to use it for, whether they will go for nuclear weapons," said ElBaradei.

"That is the concern shared by the Security Council."

(Reporting by Jana Mlcochova and Martin Dokoupil; editing by Mark Heinrich and Tim Pearce)