Rafael Grossi expresses alarm at Iran’s 60 per cent enriched uranium stockpile, one level below weapons-grade. Iran could resume the enrichment of uranium within months despite a recent wave of strikes by the United States and Israel that hit its nuclear facilities, the director of the United Nations nuclear agency, Rafael Grossi, has said.
The comments were made on Saturday, days since US President Donald Trump asserted this month’s bombings had pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “by decades”.
In an interview with CBS News on Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general stated that though major facilities were struck, others are “still standing”.
“They can have, you know, within a matter of months, I would say, several cascades of centrifuges operating and churning out enriched uranium,” Grossi said, noting that it could even be earlier.
He expressed alarm at Iran’s current stockpile of 60 per cent enriched uranium, short of weapons-grade by only a slight percentage, which theoretically could make more than nine nuclear bombs if further purified.
He accepted the IAEA has no idea if this stockpile was relocated before the bombings or destroyed partially. “There has to be, at some point, a clarification,” he stated. The Israeli attack started on June 13 with attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities.
Israel claimed the attacks were designed to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, an accusation Tehran has consistently denied. The US joined the offensive days later, hitting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In the wake of the attacks, Iranian lawmakers moved to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and denied Grossi’s request to inspect facilities, including the underground enrichment plant at Fordow.
At least 627 civilians were killed nationwide during the 12-day attack that also resulted in 28 fatalities in Israel in retaliatory attacks carried out by Iran, Israeli officials said.
Iran’s judiciary reported Saturday that an Israeli missile attack on Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 23 killed 71 individuals, including military conscripts, prisoners and visitors.
Reporting in Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas reported Sunday that Iranians assume Israel bombed the centre to release the inmates. The worst way to do that is to bomb the facility itself and kill civilians,” he continued. “This prison is not specialized by crimes. We see political prisoners, journalists, financial criminals, and foreign detainees.”.
“In 2018, the United States added Evin Prison to its list of sanctions, and the European Union did likewise in 2021 due to human rights abuses.”
