Grossi visits Iran, only after Trump's election in first visit since new Iranian president

Grossi highlighted that the Islamic Republic continues to increase its 20% and 60% enriched uranium stock as well as the number of cascades it has for enriching uranium in violation of the 2015 deal.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB NOVEMBER 13, 2024 17:41

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi holds a press conference on the opening day of a quarterly meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna, Austria, March 4, 2024. (photo credit: LISA LEUTNER/REUTERS)

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on Wednesday held his first in Iran since the new President Masoud Pezeshkian was elected in July, but with the visit coming later than he had hoped.

At a press conference on September 9 after an IAEA Board of Directors meeting discussing the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, Grossi said that he hoped to meet with Pezeshkian in the very near future, and in any case prior to US election day on November 5.

Clearly, Grossi was hoping to make progress with Pezeshkian and set some positive progress points on the ground in case Donald Trump was elected president, with expectations that a new Trump era will make diplomacy harder for Grossi and others.

During his first term from 2017-2021, Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, carried out a maximum pressure sanctions and psychological warfare campaign against Iran, supported Israeli operations against the country, and assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Chief Qasem Soleimani.

"I am far from being able to tell the international community ... what is happening. I would be in a very difficult position. So it's like they (Iran) have to help us, to help them to a certain extent," Grossi told Reuters on Tuesday on the sidelines of the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi (left) meets with then-Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Tehran, in May. Can Iran’s nuclear threat be neutralized without force or sanctions? (credit: WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY/REUTERS)

Also on Tuesday, Grossi told CNN, “We are in a moment of particular tension,” Grossi tells me. “They have a lot of nuclear material… They do not have a nuclear weapon at this point. And we have to negotiate.”

Despite all of this, it seems Iran did not want to meet before it knew who would be the next inhabitant of the White House.

All of this comes only days before the upcoming IAEA Board meeting on November 18-22.

After Pezeshkian's rise to power

Back in September, Grossi noted that since Pezeshkian's inauguration on July 30, there has been no progress whatsoever with the Islamic Republic despite public statements some of its officials have made about trying to improve the situation with the West.

Grossi said, "There has been no progress in the past 15 months towards implementing the Joint Statement of 4 March 2023," in which Tehran had promised to start to fix a number of its nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.

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Further, he said that, "It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol and therefore it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran."

"Consequently, the Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate," stated Grossi.

Moreover, the IAEA chief noted, "Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the Agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The Agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved."

Grossi was referring to extensive evidence of Iranian nuclear violations, which Mossad exposed when it raided Tehran's nuclear archives in 2018.

In addition, Grossi highlighted that the Islamic Republic continues to increase its 20% and 60% enriched uranium stock as well as the number of cascades it has for enriching uranium - all in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.