UN Nuclear Chief Wants Sit Down With Iran’s President Raisi
Iran took up half of a BBC Hardtalk interview broadcast Tuesday with Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran took up half of a BBC Hardtalk interview broadcast Tuesday with Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Pressed by interviewer Zeinab Badawi, Grossi defended the value of on-going inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites despite criticism from the IAEA, the United States, and Europe of Tehran limiting agency access, particularly to the Karaj workshop where centrifuges – devices for enriching uranium – are made.
Grossi said he would soon return to Tehran for further discussions, where he hoped to “get to know” and “sit down with” either new president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) or new foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Despite disagreement over Karaj, Grossi said the agency remained an essential international presence both in “regular” monitoring under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under a temporary arrangement that Grossi agreed in February after Tehran decided to scale back the agency’s access.
The IAEA, he said, still had “indispensable monitoring and verification capabilities that would allow us to store and to keep very important information in terms of uranium enrichment…[and] the production of centrifuges.”
While Iran has allowed the IAEA to service equipment in other sites, under the February arrangement renewed on September 12, it barred this in Karaj on September 16, due Tehran says to continuing security investigations at the facility after a drone attack in June.
Grossi stressed to Hardtalk the link between continuing agency inspections and efforts in Vienna talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). “We are the guarantors…of whatever is agreed,” he noted.
IAEA monitoring offered, he said “a full picture as can be obtained under the circumstances” with “no interruption.” With a “vast” inspection effort, Grossi said, “we are present at all the facilities that Iran has, we have inspections every day of the year.”
In 2019, the year after former US president Donald Trump left the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Iran began expanding its nuclear program, including enriching uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67 percent allowed under the JCPOA, and this year scaled back IAEA monitoring to that required under the NPT and that agreed in February.
The last detail
“What makes the present moment so important…is that if we were to be limited in the scope, in the access, that we have to Iran, then we would start losing ground and start losing the capability to know exactly what is happening to the last detail,” Grossi told Hardtalk. “[We now know] by the gram how much uranium enrichment is taking place.”
Asked why he apparently failed to convince some regional leaders over his efforts – the BBC’s Badawi cited Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett saying Iran was crossing ‘red lines’ – Grossi said there was a “political” view that “Iran having capabilities in the nuclear area is a danger in itself.”
This was not however the basis of the JCPOA, Grossi noted, under which signatories agreed to Iran conducting a nuclear program within prescribed limits.
Grossi insisted he would continue to call on Iran to abide by the September 12 agreement, including servicing equipment at Karaj. He said Iran had agreed that he would return “very soon” to Tehran to continue discussions.
Noting that the new Raisi administration had “firm views” on the nuclear program, Grossi concluded: “We need to get to know each other. I need to sit down with them. I want to listen to them, and I hope they would also listen to me.”
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Reza Najafi Tuesday urged Saudi Arabia to be transparent over its nuclear activities and open up the access of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Najafi rejected remarks by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan earlier Tuesday to the UN General Assembly criticising “Iran's continued breaches and violations of international agreements and treaties related to the nuclear agreement, and its escalation of its nuclear activities in addition to research and development activities.”
Addressing the UN General Assembly’s high-level meeting held to commemorate and promote International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (September 26), Najafi said Iran rejected the retention, stockpiling, development, use, and proliferation of nuclear arms.
Iran is in a dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over traces of previously undeclared radioactive material that it has failed to fully explain and over monitoring access to the UN nuclear watchdog.
It has also been enriching uranium to 60 percent and stockpiling it in violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers.
Najafi condemned the modernization and strengthening of nuclear arsenals by the United States and other nuclear-weapon states in violation of their arms-reduction commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Najafi said Israel continued to "threaten peace and security in the Middle East and beyond through its clandestine nuclear program," and urged the world to invite Israel to join the NPT and place its nuclear facilities under IAEA monitoring.
Unlike Israel, which is believed to hold around 180 nuclear bombs, both Iran and Saudi Arabia are NPT signatories. Saudi Arabia – which has no nuclear reactor but reportedly past nuclear links with both Iraq and Pakistani scientist AQ Khan – has limited the Safeguards access of the IAEA under a ‘small quantities protocol.’
Referring to a 2018 interview with the US CBC's 60 Minutes program in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggested Riyadh might adopt nuclear weapons if Iran developed one, Iran's state-run English channel Press TVand Tasnim news agency both claimed Wednesday that there is “international concern” over Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions.
Saudi Arabia backed former United States president Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from Iran’s 2015 deal with world powers limiting its nuclear program – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The new administration of President Joe Biden has continued Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions as Iran has continued to expand its atomic program with steps that began in 2019.
Prince Faisal this week met with US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to discuss recent developments in Iran's nuclear case. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia Tuesday to discuss Yemen and Iran - the White House kept Sullivan’s visit low-profile and no photos were issued.
In his speech to the annual UN General Assembly last week, Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz expressed hope that continuing talks with Iran, brokered by Baghdad, to restore relations would build confidence. The kingdom cut diplomatic ties in 2016 when protestors attacked its Tehran embassy after Riyadh executed 47 dissidents including leading Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.