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IAEA Chief Grossi Says Iran Stopped Cooperating With Nuclear Watchdog, Hopes to Hold Talks With Tehran by November
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi addresses the media during their Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, Sept. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
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.
The post IAEA Chief Grossi Says Iran Stopped Cooperating With Nuclear Watchdog, Hopes to Hold Talks With Tehran by November first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7
Michelle Shalmiev was born in a village in the Caucasian mountains and immigrated to Israel and settled on a kibbutz when she was 14. Her series “Putting Your Stamp on History” […]
The post Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News
Printable obituaries of eight Canadian victims and more of our original coverage.
The post Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is seen addressing supporters, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters.
JNS.org – This Oct. 7 will not only be an anniversary of tears, of pure contrition, even if the memory is burning as the people of Israel live. As to how, it wasn’t at all obvious. Our whole history is made of miracles—from the splitting of the sea to escape from the Egyptians to the Inquisition to the pogroms to the thousand other genocidal attacks to which the Jews have been subjected. In every case, the results are always incredible and surprising, especially for how we have emerged active, faithful to our Torah tradition and committed to the return to Jerusalem until we made it happen.
The War of Independence in 1948 was fought by concentration-camp veterans, yet we defeated all the Arab armies, united in hatred, who marched against us. Later, in 1967, 1973 wars were won by a hair’s breadth with miraculous strokes of imagination and leaders who gave birth to ideas that people would have expected. No one would have ever bet a euro, penny or shekel on the idea that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his entire hierarchy could be eliminated, petrifying Iran, especially since we have already reduced its other favorite proxy, Hamas, to pieces. And now we have bombed Iran’s other proxy, the Houthis, some 2,000 kilometers away, destroying the airport from which they receive their weapons and aid from the ayatollahs. The Islamic Republic’s leader, Ali Khamenei, is reportedly hiding underground, the Iraqi and Syrian Shi’ites are waiting to see if they are next, and cities controlled by Tehran are shaking.
As President Joe Biden said, it is a measure of justice, but one that Israel has undertaken in an impossible fashion, defending its citizens amid a thousand prohibitions with determination and without fear. Only in this way can a 76-year-old young state, which has been attacked from all sides, defend itself. The country’s existence is the latest chapter in the history of a people born many millennia ago in the Land of Israel, who are finally back home and defending their state.
The war is certainly not over, as Hezbollah reportedly had 100,000 fighters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that he must see this fight through to the end, despite the international pressure to which Israel has been subjected for nearly a year. Israel’s leadership understands that its very existence is at definitive risk if there is no “new Middle East” in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
While previous generations and Israeli leaders hoped that peace agreements would establish peace in the region, today’s leaders know that there is also a need for battle to stop those who, dominated by absurd fanatical and religious beliefs, wish to kill you. (After all, what do the Houthi rebels in Yemen have to do with the Jews and Israel?)
This is the lesson of our time—not just for Israel and the Jewish people but for everyone. The Jewish people are writing a new page in history, one in which the free world must write and fight alongside them, as it is a battle for the survival of Western ideals. Israel has eliminated the two most dangerous terrorist groups in the world—Hamas and Hezbollah—with operations that will set a precedent for decades. And it challenges Iran. I would like to hear the applause, please.
The post The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle first appeared on Algemeiner.com.