Iran still possesses enough highly enriched uranium and the technical capability to build nuclear weapons, despite the Israeli and US strikes that damaged its enrichment sites, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday.
Although the June attacks on Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordo “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program, the country retains the knowledge and material “to manufacture a few nuclear weapons,” Grossi told FRANCE 24.
“To reconstruct that industrial technological base, Iran would need time,” Grossi said, adding that the strikes marked a sharp shift “from diplomacy to the use of force” and urging a return to negotiations. “Diplomacy is the only path toward a durable solution,” he said.
Politicized report and call for renewed talks
Grossi dismissed remarks that an IAEA safeguards report provided justification for the strikes, saying it had been politicized and contained nothing new. He also rejected suggestions that artificial intelligence influenced the agency’s conclusions, emphasizing that “our findings are made by human inspectors, not machines.”
The IAEA’s Board of Governors found Iran in non-compliance with its nuclear obligations on June 12 after the agency said Tehran had failed to explain the presence of undeclared nuclear material at multiple sites. Inspectors last verified more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Iran shortly before the June conflict began.
In late September, 70 members of Iranian parliament in a letter to the heads of the branches of government and the Supreme National Security Council requested that, by changing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s previous fatwa and in order to create deterrence, the Islamic Republic undertake the manufacture and possession of a nuclear bomb.
In recent months, and especially after the 12-day war with Israel, several officials of the Islamic Republic have criticized Grossi’s reports. Some called him a “Mossad agent,” and even Kayhan -- a newspaper overseen by Khamenei’s representative -- demanded his execution on charges of spying for Israel.
