Iran intentions not enough without strong inspections, IAEA chief says
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said at a news conference in Japan that the US-Iran memorandum of understanding gives IAEA inspectors access to Iran, pushing back after Tehran suggested key nuclear sites would remain off-limits until a final deal is reached and sanctions are lifted.
“There is an agreement, and to comply with that agreement, the IAEA will have to have access and inspect,” Grossi told reporters in Tokyo, according to Reuters. “We hope to be there soon.”
Grossi said Iran had declared it did not intend to develop nuclear weapons, but added that statements of intent were not enough after the recent conflict.
“But of course intentions are not enough. We have to have a very strong verification system in place,” he said, adding that inspections should resume “as soon as is practicable.”
He also said the IAEA had “barely initiated” talks with Iran on what to do with Tehran’s uranium stockpile following the preliminary agreement with Washington.
“Initial conversations have taken place ... We expect this work to pick up soon,” Grossi said.
Tehran suspended cooperation with the IAEA last July under a law passed by parliament after last year’s 12-day war with Israel, leaving the watchdog with limited visibility over key parts of Iran’s nuclear program.
David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and a longtime analyst of Iran’s nuclear program, rejected the argument that Tehran emerged stronger from the war, saying US and Israeli strikes had severely damaged Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.
“You’d have to be delirious to think that’s the case,” Albright told the Washington Post when asked whether Iran was stronger after the war. He said that, from a technical nuclear perspective, the military campaign was “very successful” in setting back Tehran’s weapons capability.
Albright said Iran’s enrichment program, gas centrifuge network and parts of what he described as its secret weaponization effort had been badly damaged. “The centrifuge program as it was no longer exists,” he said, adding that what remains is dangerous but reduced to “remnants.”
Before the US launched Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, Albright said Iran had about 22,000 centrifuges, many of them operating and enriching uranium up to 60 percent. He said Iran is now “not enriching at all” and that most of those centrifuges have been destroyed.
He said roughly 10 nuclear-weapons-related sites were destroyed, including storage, conversion, research and development facilities, as well as sites Israel said were linked to weaponization work. Many scientists and engineers were also killed, he said.
Albright said Iran could previously have built a nuclear weapon within months and several weapons within six months to a year. After the strikes, he estimated it would take Tehran at least a year to try, with much less certainty that the effort would succeed.
He warned, however, that unresolved risks remain, including buried enriched uranium at Natanz and Isfahan and the underground Pickaxe Mountain site near Natanz, which was not struck and must be addressed in negotiations.
Albright said the key test in any nuclear deal is whether Iran admits it had a nuclear weapons program and fully discloses where that work took place. He warned Tehran may try to stall the process, but said the military campaign had achieved “pretty significant” results on the nuclear front.
The index, produced for Iran in collaboration with Impact Iran, said torture remained deeply embedded in the country’s law, policy and practice, and warned that US and Israeli strikes on Iran during the June 2025 military escalation had further increased the risk of torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.
The report said Iran scored at the most severe level on six of the index’s seven pillars: political commitment, police and institutional violence, impunity, victims’ rights, the right to defend human rights, and protection for all. It rated Iran as high-risk on conditions in detention.
It said Iran had not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, did not criminalize torture as a distinct offense, and continued to allow punishments such as flogging and amputation.
The report also cited the use of confessions in convictions, saying this created incentives for torture and ill-treatment to extract statements, including confessions later broadcast by state media.
It said at least 1,639 executions were recorded in Iran in 2025, including executions of people who were under 18 at the time of their alleged offenses.
The index also pointed to what it called near-total impunity, saying no independent body investigates torture allegations or deaths in custody, while overcrowded detention facilities operate with little or no outside oversight.
Women and girls, ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ people, human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers face heightened risks of torture, arbitrary detention and other abuse, the report said.
“In Iran, torture is not a failure of the system – it is the system: written into law, rewarded by the courts, and concealed behind prison walls,” said Rose Richter, Impact Iran’s executive director.
Richter said security forces fired on civilians even inside hospitals during the crackdown of December 2025 and January 2026, when more than 50,000 people were arrested and more than 7,000 killed.
Other rights groups and monitoring organizations have previously reported higher figures for the crackdown, pointing out the difficulty of verifying casualties and arrests amid restrictions on access, intimidation of families and limited independent reporting inside Iran.
“Behind each of those numbers is a person whose suffering was deliberate, and a family still waiting for the truth,” Richter said.
Gerald Staberock, secretary general of OMCT, said the index was intended to turn “scattered warnings into evidence that cannot be ignored.”
“The Global Torture Index should be read by development agencies, but also by security actors and businesses seeking to engage or invest in the countries covered,” Staberock said.
OMCT urged Iran to halt executions and judicial corporal punishment, ratify the UN Convention against Torture, criminalize torture, end the use of coerced confessions and give the UN Fact-Finding Mission unhindered access.
