IAEA Chief: Iran Nuclear Information Gap ‘Bigger and Bigger’
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has denied Iran’s claim the agency has flouted its technical role by acting politically.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has denied Iran’s claim the agency has flouted its technical role by acting politically.
“I live under political pressure,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna Monday on the first day of an IAEA governing board quarterly meeting.“The thing is what I do with that pressure…I’m not offended, they are pushing their national interest in the way they see it…I have an international mandate, I am not here doing what I want but what I must.”
Grossi rejected Tehran’s charge that the IAEA overstepping its role by pursuing enquiries into nuclear work carried out by Iran before 2003. Tehran has said that the agency produced a final report in 2015 but then revived its interest only after allegations made in 2018 by Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister.
“This issue is very straightforward,” Grossi said. “We found [in inspections after 2018] traces of uranium in places that were never declared [as nuclear-related sites]…We are asking questions. Explain to me how this is a political use of my authorities. This is what the IAEA is supposed to do.”
The IAEA enquiry has become bound up in talks, currently paused, to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), as Tehran demands the probe be dropped. The United States and three European states – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; the ‘E3’ – have stressed Iran must satisfy the agency over the uranium traces regardless of the fate of the JCPOA.
‘Everything is interconnected’
“Everything is interconnected,” Grossi noted. The IAEA chief pointed out that reviving the JCPOA, by boosting agency access, “could facilitate us getting to broader conclusions” over Iran’ nuclear program. “Frankly, the information gap is bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said. “We don’t want to sound dramatic, but the reality is that it’s going to be extremely difficult, and we will have to work very hard, and Iran will have to be very transparent…”
Grossi accepted that his contacts with senior Iranian officials had diminished in recent weeks, despite Iran’s diplomatic representation at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna: “We were used to having an intense dialogue, including with [leading politicians in] Tehran, and I hope that dialogue will resume. …without it being resumed in that way it’s going to be very difficult. We have to see eye to eye, and work together.”
In Berlin, Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said Monday, at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, it was time to move beyond failed negotiations, repeating his suggestion Sunday that talks to revive the JCPOA were dead.
Scholz said it was regrettable that Iran had not “as yet” responded positively to European Union proposals, circulated August 8, aimed at successfully concluding the JCPOA talks. The past four weeks have seen messages, mediated by the EU, between the US and Iran that have failed to bridge differences over what is required to revive the 2015 agreement, which the US left in 2018 prompting Iran to expand its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits and to limit IAEA access.
Lapid has argued that his tactful approach to France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Biden administration has been more productive than the assertive stance of his rival Benjamin Netanyahu, as the two men lead their respective political blocs towards Israel’s November 1 parliamentary election.
“Yesterday the E3 countries announced that a nuclear agreement with Iran will not be signed in the near future, that the IAEA’s open files regarding Iran are not about to be closed,” Lapid said Sunday. “Israel is conducting a successful diplomatic campaign to stop the nuclear agreement and prevent the lifting of sanctions on Iran.”
However, what pushed the Europeans to say that there are “no active negotiations” was Iran’s latest response to a European Union draft agreement submitted to Tehran and Washington on August 8. Iran’s response was called “non-constructive” by the Biden administration and seen by the E3 as a sign of lack of willingness to make a deal by Tehran.
If Iran’s response was different after 17 months of talks, the Biden administration had already agreed to the EU draft and the optimism prevailing in August would have been justified.
Iran insists that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drop an enquiry into uranium traces found in sites linked to Tehran’s nuclear work before 2003. It also demands various sorts of guarantees from the US.
Time for ‘new agreement’
A “senior Israeli official” told journalists Sunday that the time had come to look for a “new agreement,” leading some Israeli media to proclaim the JCPOA dead. Unless the IAEA, Iran and the US together with the E3 change their minds, “there won't be any choice” but to abandon the 2015 deal, the Israeli official reportedly said.
Lapid said the aim of his trip to Germany was to coordinate “positions on the nuclear issue” and that he would be “finalizing the details of the strategic, economic, and security cooperation document we are going to sign.”
Lapid also stressed Israel was “working to prevent Iran from establishing terrorist bases throughout the Middle East and especially in Syria.” Israel regards Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a close Iranian ally, as well as most Palestinian groups as ‘terrorist.’ Lapid said there was a “growing terror threat in the West Bank,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
Consulting partners
The E3, apparently short of declaring the JCPOA talks dead as Lapid suggested, said it would “consult, alongside international partners” on how best to proceed, both over the continued expansion in Iran’s nuclear program and its failure to satisfy the IAEA over the uranium traces.
In Iran, some argue Europe’s attitude towards the talks may change as winter brings energy shortages due to sanctions on Russian energy exports and European leaders eye Iran’s 90 million barrels of oil in storage, which would be released with US sanctions eased should the JCPOA be restored.
Ali Akbar Salehi, who was head of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran (AEOI) when the JCPOA was signed in 2015, defended the agreement this week against critics by arguing it had not fundamentally stymied Iran’s technological progress. Hence, Salehi argued, the AEOI had been quickly able to expand the program once parliament, in the wake of the November 2020 had passed legislation requiring a higher level of uranium enrichment and employing more advanced centrifuges.
A statement from the ‘E3’ said Tehran had chosen not to take the “critical diplomatic opportunity” offered by a text circulated August 8 by the European Union in an effort to conclude 18-month talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
A statement from United States foreign affairs spokesman Ned Price Friday said Secretary of State Antony Blinken had briefed the E3 foreign ministers on his Ukraine visit and that they had “discussed the challenges posed by Iran and our commitment to working together to address them.”
Since the EU draft was circulated August 8, there has been a series of diplomatic exchanges between Iran and the US that have failed to resolve remaining differences over JCPOA revival.
The E3 statement highlighted this week’s report from the IAEA director Rafael Mariano Grossi that he had made no progress with Iran in explaining the uranium traces since the IAEA managing board in June passed a resolution, drawn up by the US and the E3, censuring Tehran. Saturday’s E3 statement reiterated that Iran needed to “provide technically credible answers,” regardless of the JCPOA talks, because of its “legally binding obligations” under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.
Tehran has argued the IAEA probe is politically motivated, and results from allegations made by Israel in 2018 as Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA. In December 2015, Iran argues, the IAEA had produced a final report on Tehran’s pre-2003 nuclear work.
But while the E3 and US statements referred to continuing consultation, neither suggested what steps might be taken at the next IAEA board. Russia and China have both said that pursuing the matter, even back in June, was unhelpful to the JCPOA talks, and both countries hold vetoes at the United Nations Security Council should the E3 and US seek to refer Iran there.
The pause in the JCPOA talks has heightened focus on the Biden administration’s approach. It has stoked debate in Israel as it approaches a November 1 election. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is highlighting Iran to undermine Prime Minister Yair Lapid after David Barnea, head of the extraterritorial force Mossad, gave August press briefings critical of Biden, with whom Lapid has sought to coordinate.
Ross: US must ‘make clear’ it will act
Opponents of the JCPOA in the US have also gained momentum. Dennis Ross, who has held senior positions in Republican and Democratic administrations and maintains a skeptical view of the JCPOA while acknowledging it curbed Iran’s nuclear program, this week published a piece in Foreign Policy arguing that even if the 2015 agreement were revived, “Iran after 2030 [when some JCPOA clauses expire] would be in a position to move quickly to a bomb unless Iranian leaders come to believe that the cost of doing so is too high.”
Given Iran had acquired “nuclear know-how” and had become “a threshold nuclear weapons state” since Trump left the JCPOA and Iran expanded its nuclear activities, Ross wrote, Washington needed to make clear to the Iranian leadership that “the United States will act at a certain point and take out their entire nuclear infrastructure.”
While the Biden administration, and the E3, have never ruled out military action, Ross’s argument was that Iran’s leaders “do not believe Washington will ever use force against them.” This, he wrote, the US can and should change.