Iran’s nuclear program is ‘galloping ahead’: IAEA chief

Agencies | Tehran

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Iran’s nuclear program is “galloping ahead” and the UN atomic watchdog has no clear view of what Tehran is doing, the agency’s chief said on Friday.

In June, Iran began removing monitoring equipment installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency under the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said at the time this could deal a “fatal blow” to chances of reviving the agreement.

“The bottom line is that for almost five weeks I have had very limited visibility, with a nuclear program that is galloping ahead and, therefore, if there is an agreement, it is going to be very difficult for me to reconstruct the puzzle of this whole period of forced blindness,” Grossi told Spain’s El Pais newspaper in an interview published on Friday.

“It is not impossible, but it is going to require a very complex task and perhaps some specific agreements.”

Grossi said in June there was a window of just three to four weeks to restore at least some of the monitoring that was being scrapped before the IAEA lost the ability to piece together Iran’s most important nuclear activities.

Tehran has breached many of the deal’s limits on its nuclear activities since former US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions.

Iran is now enriching uranium to close to weapons grade, and analysts warn that Iran is close to being able to sprint toward making a nuclear bomb. Grossi said he was concerned and worried about the weeks with no visibility.

He said: “The agency needs to reconstruct a database, without which any agreement will rest on a very fragile basis, because if we don’t know what’s there, how can we determine how much material to export, how many centrifuges to leave unused?”

Talks to restore the deal have stalled since March amid differences between Tehran and Washington. The two sides negotiated indirectly through the EU coordinator.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Friday that negotiators were close to a new agreement, but Tehran was still seeking economic guarantees from the US.

“We have a ready text in front of us and we agree on more than 95 percent of its content, but there’s still an important flaw in this text — we need to get the full economic benefits of the agreement. We don’t want to be stung twice in the same spot,” he said.

“We are serious about reaching a good, strong and lasting agreement but we do not want an agreement at any price.”