IAEA chief: Hopes to improve Iran nuke status with new president

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on Monday told the IAEA Board of Governors that he has corresponded with new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and is hopeful that a near future meeting will lead to progress regarding the nuclear standoff.

At the same time, Grossi noted that since Pezeshkian’s inauguration on July 30, there has been no progress whatsoever with the Islamic Republic despite public statements some of its officials have made about trying to improve the situation with the West.

Grossi said, ” There has been no progress in the past 15 months towards implementing the Joint Statement of 4 March 2023,” in which Tehran had promised to start to fix a number of its nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.

Further, he said, “It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran.”

“Consequently, the Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” stated Grossi.

Inconsistent Iranian statement

Moreover, the IAEA chief noted, “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the Agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The Agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”

Grossi was referring to extensive evidence of Iranian nuclear violations, which Mossad exposed when it raided Tehran’s nuclear archives in 2018. 

In addition, Grossi highlighted that the Islamic Republic continues to increase its 20% and 60% enriched uranium stock as well as the number of cascades it has for enriching uranium – all in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Every few months in recent years, the IAEA Board has met to confront the Iran nuclear issue, with it issuing a condemnation of Tehran in June of this year and in 2022, but to date, it has failed to refer the issue to the UN Security Council where global sanctions could potentially be “snapped back” on Iran.

Pezeshkian is viewed as more moderate than his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, and more moderate than the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but so far, there are no clear signs that he will have the power or be able to make the concessions to the West necessary to end the ongoing stalemate.