Iran Says UN Nuclear Chief Grossi To Visit Monday As Deadlines Loom
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit Iran Monday, state media said Wednesday, before the IAEA board meets November 24.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit Iran Monday, state media said Wednesday, before the IAEA board meets November 24.
The reports cited Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). The visit would also come ahead of the planned resumption of talks in Vienna November 29 between Iran and world powers aimed at reviving Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and as an IAEA report says Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to 60 percent has jumped nearly 80 percent in under three months.
Kamalvandi said Grossi would meet with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and AEOI chief Mohammad Eslami.
IAEA access to Iran’s nuclear program would be crucial in monitoring a revived JCPOA, but Grossi, along with Western states, has expressed growing concern since February 2020 when Iran reduced access to little more than required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
IAEA full access
Grossi has also criticized as inadequate explanations given by Iran over traces of uranium found at two undeclared sites and relating to work carried out before 2003.
A more pressing issue for Grossi is restoring access to Iran’s Karaj plant under terms of a temporary arrangement first made in February. While IAEA inspectors have been allowed to service monitoring equipment elsewhere, Iran has barred this at Karaj on the grounds it is carrying out a security investigation after a June attack, widely attributed to Israel.
An IAEA report this week puts Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent at 17.7kg, up from 10kg in September. While this is less than the 25kg claimed by nuclear spokesman Behruz Kamalvandi November 4, it represents a large increase in a level of enrichment close to the 90 percent regarded as ‘weapons grade.’
Tehran has also now 113.8kg enriched to 20 percent, up from 84kg in September. A purity of only 3.67 percent is allowed under the JCPOA.
It also emerged Wednesday, in an agency report, that Grossi wrote to Iran October 25 complaining over excessively invasive physical searches by security officials at nuclear sites.
If Grossi fails to make progress next week, the European JCPOA signatories – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – may discuss with the United States options to raise Iran’s lack of cooperation at the IAEA board. Speculation they might do so at a board meeting in September waned once Grossi extended the temporary monitoring agreement, which the IAEA chief later insisted covered Karaj as well as other sites.
Reuters quoted a senior diplomat Wednesday that the IAEA, given its lack of access, did not know if Iran has resumed manufacturing advanced centrifuges – the devices used to enrich uranium – at Karaj, as was reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal citing “diplomats familiar with the activities.” The advanced centrifuges enable quicker and more efficient enrichment of uranium, thereby reducing the time it would take to enrich to 90 percent ‘weapons grade.’
Karaj parts installed at Ferdow
“According to one of the diplomats familiar with Iran’s program, Iran has installed the centrifuges whose key parts were produced at Karaj at Iran’s underground, heavily fortified, Fordow site,” the Journal reported. The diplomat quoted said there was no evidence the equipment had been diverted elsewhere but “as the number of unmonitored centrifuges increases, the likelihood for this scenario increases.”
The Vienna talks have been in abeyance since June when Iran stopped its participation. While the US has continued ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced by previous president Donald Trump on leaving the JCPOA in 2018, Iran has continued to expand its nuclear program – notably in enriching uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67 percent allowed under the JCPOA, and in using advanced centrifuges banned under the deal.
The new government in Tehran, which includes critics of the JCPOA, has adopted a more assertive tone, suggesting that while Iran would like to see US sanctions lifted, a return to the nuclear deal is a lower priority that it was under the previous administration of President Hassan Rouhani.
Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, released today, describes a November 12, 2020 meeting, shortly after the disputed November 3 election, when Miller talked through with Trump and top officials a response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report. The IAEA warned that Iran had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to the point where it could make enough weapons-grade uranium for two bombs within six months.
Trump turned to Miller, according to Karl’s book, and asked if Iran’s nuclear sites could be taken out from the air. "Yes, Mr President," replied Miller. "We can absolutely do that."
But 100 manned flights would be needed, given Iran’s air defense, and “three, four or six planes” would probably be shot down, Miller told Trump. “I just want to make sure you are comfortable with that.” Trump was worried about things going wrong, especially Boeing’s involvement in air-to-air refueling as “they can't build s**t anymore."
Miller’s tactic worked. An alarmed Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, phoned Bill Barr, the attorney general, to get him onside.
"I would play the f***ing madman," Miller told Karl. "And everybody else would be like, ‘All right, he’s the new guy. He's fucking insane…I have found oftentimes with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down.”
The Trump emerging in Karl’s account is unpredictable and ignorant – but a man consistently skeptical of force and committed to withdrawing US troops from foreign theaters, an aim more common among the left of the Democratic Party than amid right-wing Republicans.
The writing had been on the wall for at least a year. Trump had in 2018 withdrawn from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions that he and apparently Pompeo believed would force Iran into broad concessions over its missile and nuclear programs and to curb its regional alliances.
Ten minutes to go
But did Trump have a plan B? A long piece in the New York Times in September 2019 highlighted Trump’s June 20 decision not to retaliate against Iran for shooting down a US surveillance drone. With ships aiming Tomahawk missiles, jets in the sky, and 10,000 sailors and airmen mobilized, Trump called of strikes with ten minutes to go after being told 150 Iranians would die.
The Times argued that the “about-face, so typically impulsive, instinctive and removed from any process” was a turning point in Trump’s presidency, one that
“was taken by Iran as a sign of weakness, emboldening it to attack” Saudi oil facilities at Buqaiq and Khurais in September 2019.
Trump’s response to the Buqaiq-Khurais attack – in which Iran denied involvement – was just to tighten financial sanctions.
But the Times even before that attack had noted that “as eager as he is to fight with 280 characters on Twitter, Mr Trump has proved profoundly reluctant to fight with live ammunition on a real battlefield.” The paper highlighted the influence on Trump of Fox News, especially presenter Tucker Carlson, always keen to remind the president he had been elected to stop wars, not start them.
Not ready to respond
In a meeting in Congress over the drone shooting down, Trump, according the NYT piece, “rambled on about how bad Mr Obama’s deal [the 2015 nuclear agreement] had been and insisted over and over again …that his pressure campaign would force Iran to the bargaining table. He seemed less certain about what to do in response to the drone shootdown.”
The picture emerging from Karl’s Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show confirms the NYT portrayal. Trump essentially repeated a mistake made by Barak Obama in failing to act in 2013 when President Bashar al-Assad apparently crossed a “red line” set by Obama over the use of chemical weapons.
In that sense, Miller’s “f***ing madman” act had more sense than the president’s responses. “Trump is in a box of his own making,” Philip Gordon, a Middle East adviser to Obama, told the Times in 2019. “He has put in place policies…guaranteed to provoke an aggressive Iranian response, but he’s not prepared to respond aggressively in turn, and the Iranians know it.”