IAEA Chief Grossi Says Iran Stopped Cooperating With Nuclear Watchdog, Hopes to Hold Talks With Tehran by November

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi hopes to hold talks with new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian by November on improving Iran‘s stalled cooperation with his agency, he said on Monday.

Several long-standing issues are dogging relations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including Tehran’s barring of uranium-enrichment experts on the inspection team and its failure for years to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

“It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal], including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran,” Grossi said in a statement to a quarterly meeting of his agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

“Consequently, the agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” Grossi added. “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”

Despite saying there “has been no progress” in resolving several issues concerning Iran’s nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the IAEA, Grossi said he and Iran’s president would meet in the near future.

“He [Pezeshkian] agreed to meet with me at an appropriate juncture,” Grossi said in his statement, referring to an exchange after Pezeshkian’s election in July.

“I encourage Iran to facilitate such a meeting in the not-too-distant future so that we can establish a constructive dialogue that leads swiftly to real results,” he said.

With nuclear diplomacy largely stalled between the Iranian presidential election and the US one on Nov. 5, Grossi said he wanted to make real progress soon.

Asked at a news conference if his reference to the “not-too-distant future” meant before or after the US election, Grossi said: “No, hopefully before that.”

IAEA board resolutions ordering Iran to cooperate urgently with the investigation into the uranium traces and calling on it to reverse its barring of inspectors have brought little change, and quarterly IAEA reports seen by Reuters on Aug. 29 showed no progress.

Iran responded to the latest resolution in June by announcing an expansion of its enrichment capacity, installing more centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, at its Natanz and Fordow sites.

At its Fordow site dug into a mountain where it is enriching to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons grade, it installed two of the eight new cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges within days of informing the IAEA of its plan. Two weeks later, it had installed another two.

By the end of the quarter, the latest IAEA reports showed Iran had completed installation of all eight new cascades but still not brought them online. At its larger underground site at Natanz, which is enriching to up to 5 percent purity, it had brought 15 new cascades of other advanced models online.

“What we see is that there is some work, but nothing that indicates a rush to a fast implementation of a big increase in terms of enrichment production,” Grossi said.

Iran has stepped up nuclear work since 2019, after then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from an agreement reached under his predecessor Barack Obama under which Iran agreed to temporary restrictions on its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Western diplomats say there are plans for talks on fresh restrictions should Democrat Kamala Harris win the election.

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