A TASS wire reports on an interview with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi gave to France’s LCI TV channel, in which the director responded to Trump’s recent talk about restarting nuclear weapons testing in the U.S. “I think this weakens the peace system, possibly also the non-proliferation system. This is a manifestation of the existing deep crisis,” Grossi said. According to TASS, Grossi called the idea of testing in response to others’ tests a “muscle game.”
Grossi also cast doubt on U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims that both Russia and China are conducting secret tests themselves. “I do not know if this is true or not, but as for traditional tests, we have an international monitoring system created in accordance with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and controlled by an Italian organization close to mine that is involved in the prohibition of nuclear tests and can immediately record such phenomena. In any case, test after test, rocket after rocket, this is not good news,” Grossi said.
The director otherwise called for protecting the nuclear nonproliferation regime and “returning the UN to its role in maintaining peace and international security.”
