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The Chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency Won't Let Iran Off the Hook

(Foreign Policy) Andrea Stricker and Anthony Ruggiero - Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is refusing to close his agency's probe into Tehran's suspect atomic activities to pave the way for the nuclear accord's revival. In June, Grossi reported that Iran failed to provide "technically credible" explanations for the presence of uranium at three sites. He reiterated on Monday that the IAEA cannot settle its inquiry until Tehran obliges. He stated that the IAEA has a "legal obligation" to continue the investigation and needs to know where the Iranian nuclear material and equipment in question are today. Since 2018, the IAEA has been investigating Iranian activities related to the production of nuclear material at four sites in the early 2000s that the regime failed to declare to the IAEA. In 2018, Israel seized a set of Iranian nuclear files detailing that Tehran had a robust nuclear weapons program up until 2003. The archive revealed that the regime downsized and better camouflaged its nuclear weapons activities in mid-2003. It also contains memorandums of meetings by senior Iranian officials discussing where and how to hide ongoing nuclear weapons activities. In 2019 and 2020, the IAEA asked Iran for access to three Iranian sites, based on archive information. Iran delayed access and tried to sanitize and remove evidence from the three locations, yet inspectors detected human-made uranium at all of them. Marivan was a former high explosive testing location relevant to nuclear weapons development. Varamin was a former pilot uranium conversion facility for nuclear weapons production. Turquzabad held equipment and nuclear material. The Institute for Science and International Security has translated and analyzed the archive and estimates that an additional 19 to 23 current and former Iranian sites require investigation. Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2022-09-01 00:00:00
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