#IAEA warns: #Iran's #nuclear program is progressing "rapidly" #usa

The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that Iran's nuclear program is "advancing rapidly", and that the agency's ability to monitor what is happening there is very limited.

In June, Iran began removing all IAEA surveillance equipment and cameras that were placed under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Grossi said at the time that this could deal a "fatal blow" to the chances of reviving the agreement that the United States withdrew from in 2018.

Grossi told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in an interview published on Friday: "The bottom line is that over the course of almost five weeks, I have had very limited monitoring capacity at a time when the nuclear program is progressing rapidly. So if an agreement is reached it will be very difficult for me." Let me put things right with all that period of enforced blindness."

Grossi, who is visiting Madrid, said that restoring things to normal and filling in the gaps in the missing and missing parts due to the absence of supervision from the agency: "It is not impossible ... but it will require a very complex task and perhaps some specific agreements."

Grossi said in June there was only a three to four week window to restore at least some of the monitoring that was abolished before the International Atomic Energy Agency lost the ability to assess Iran's most important nuclear activities.
restrictions

Iran has breached many of the deal's restrictions on its nuclear activities since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it and reimposed sanctions on Tehran in 2018. It is continuing to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade level.

Western powers warn that Iran is close to being able to speed up building a nuclear bomb, while Iran denies its desire to do so in the first place.

Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on reviving the 2015 deal have stalled since March.

Grossi expressed concern about weeks of no oversight.

He added: "The agency needs to rebuild a database, without which any agreement will be based on a very shaky foundation because if we don't know what's there, how can we determine how much material we are exporting and how many centrifuges we will leave unused?"