<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654619525435,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-b63e-dd00-a56b-b67e42560001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654619525435,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-b63e-dd00-a56b-b67e42560001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_54618782", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1027697"} }); ","_id":"00000181-3a38-d421-ada5-7e7df8f10000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedWorld leaders can’t stop Iran from stockpiling enough nuclear material to build weapons of mass destruction, according to the United Nations’s lead nuclear watchdog.
“This is going to happen, because they continue to enrich, in a quite sustained way,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi told reporters Monday. “And so, it’s a matter of time, where they get to one or more so-called ‘significant quantities’ … which is the quantity … for which the development of a nuclear weapon cannot be excluded.”
Grossi struck a resigned rather than desperate note about that development, as Tehran has remained committed to the expansion of its nuclear program despite President Joe Biden’s long-stalled attempt to negotiate a renewal of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Grossi’s update cast a forlorn light over that effort, as he acknowledged the possibility that Iran may “already” have acquired enough nuclear material to build one “or two” bombs.
“Different people have different calculations,” he said. “And, it’s very close, let’s put it like that … it’s going to happen.”
IRAN VOWS TO AVENGE DEATH OF REVOLUTIONARY GUARD COLONEL SHOT DEAD
Grossi took questions in the context of his quarterly report to the IAEA Board of Governors, the multinational panel that oversees his agency, after meeting in Jerusalem last week with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In 2020, Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, told the U.N. General Assembly that “Iran will have enough enriched uranium in a few months for two nuclear bombs.”
Grossi did not reveal the provenance of the various “calculations” that he had in mind. Instead, he implied that any differences between the assessments are all but moot.
“So, for all we can say and see, the development of new centrifuges continue in Iran, which means that they want to have technology to produce more and faster,” he said.
Iran’s progress toward nuclear capabilities has unfolded as Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team works to negotiate a return to joint compliance with the 2015 deal, which then-President Donald Trump exited in 2018. That agreement circumscribed Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for economic relief — a pact applauded by most Democrats and European leaders as a means of defusing a nuclear crisis; it was maligned by some Democrats, congressional Republicans, and U.S. allies in the Middle East, who perceived Iran as using the deal to enhance its conventional aggression in the region.
Biden, like his predecessors in the Oval Office, has promised Iran will “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch,” but Blinken’s point man for the Iran talks resisted bipartisan pressure to abandon the negotiations during an appearance last month before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“[The] military option cannot resolve this issue,” State Department Special Envoy Rob Malley told lawmakers. “It could set it back, and we’re happy to talk about it more in a classified setting, but there is no military response. … The only real solution is a diplomatic one.”
Yet international powers have struggled to break the dynamic whereby Iranian leaders can set the price for their pledge to curtail nuclear developments and proceed if that price is not met. Negotiations have stalled in recent weeks following Biden’s reported refusal to remove the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. And Tehran has refused for years to answer questions from Grossi’s team about evidence that Iran held nuclear material at three secret locations at some point during the years in which the Iran deal was in force.
“Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations in Iran,” Grossi said in a prepared statement to the IAEA board, adding that his agency would not “be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful” unless those questions were answered.
Iran could face a rare censure at the IAEA later this week, but Tehran responded to the prospect by implying that such a rebuke would damage the nuclear talks.
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“Those who push for anti-Iran resolution at IAEA will be responsible for all the consequences,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted Sunday. “We welcome a good, strong & lasting agreement.”
