Iran has rejected IAEA chief Rafael Grossi’s request to resume visits of nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. and Israel in mid-June. “The Parliament of Iran has voted for a halt to collaboration with the IAEA until the safety and security of our nuclear activities can be guaranteed,” Abbas Araghchi said on X yesterday. “This is a direct result of @rafaelmgrossi’s regrettable role in obfuscating the fact that the Agency—a full decade ago—already closed all past issues. Through this malign action, he directly facilitated the adoption of a politically-motivated resolution against Iran by the IAEA BoG [board of governors] as well as the unlawful Israeli and U.S. bombings of Iranian nuclear sites. In an astounding betrayal of his duties, @rafaelmgrossi has additionally failed to explicitly condemn such blatant violations of IAEA safeguards and its Statute.”
“The IAEA and its Director-General are fully responsible for this sordid state of affairs,” Araghchi concluded. “@rafaelmgrossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent. Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defense of its interests, its people, and its sovereignty.”
Grossi, for his part, has doubled down on his insistence that inspections must be resumed, because it is likely that Iran’s nuclear capabilities survived the bombing and that they could embark on a path to develop a nuclear weapon, if they are not inspected. This is an argument which Israel and its war party sponsors in Washington and London will find very convenient, in order to justify their plans to resume open warfare against Iran in the near term.
In an interview with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan, recorded on Friday, June 27 for airing on Sunday, June 29, Grossi said “that what happened in particular in Fordo, Natanz, Isfahan, where Iran used to have and still has, to some degree, capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree. Some is still standing.” He continued: “Although our job is not to assess damage, but to re-establish the knowledge of the activities that take place there, and the access to the material, which is very, very important, the material that they will be producing if they continue with this activity.”
As for the 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium that Iran has already produced, “we don’t know where this material could be,” Grossi said. “If we don’t get that clarification, this will continue to be hanging, you know, over our heads as—as a potential problem. So this is why I say it’s so important, first of all, for Iran to allow our inspectors to continue their indispensable work as soon as possible.”
Grossi added in response to a follow-up question: “But we need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened. Iran had a very vast ambitious program, and part of it may still be there, and if not, there is also the self-evident truth that the knowledge is there. The industrial capacity is there. Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology, as is obvious.”
