Nuclear Inspectors Leave Iran After Cooperation Halted With U.N. Watchdog
Iran's president enacted a law on Wednesday that halts cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, effectively blocking international oversight into Iran's contentious nuclear program.
This comes at a particularly critical moment, when experts are warning that the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may simply drive the country to take its program underground, making it even more difficult to determine whether it was working toward building a weapon.
'An I.A.E.A. team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,' the U.N. agency said in a statement on the platform X.
Tensions between Iran and the agency had been rising since Israel launched attacks on Iranian military and nuclear sites, prompting a war that briefly drew in the United States.
Iran had turned some of its ire over the attacks against the I.A.E.A., which declared last month that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations.
Iranian officials have argued that the censure gave Israel political cover for its attacks, which were launched a day after the agency's declaration, striking nuclear and military sites and killing nuclear scientists.
It is not yet clear how badly Iran's nuclear program was damaged in the war.
President Trump said that the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, in addition to Israeli strikes over 12 days of war, 'obliterated' the program.
Other officials, including the I.A.E.A. director general, Rafael Grossi, have been more circumspect, saying that Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains unaccounted for, and that the program may have been only delayed, rather than destroyed.
Uranium enriched at low levels can be used as fuel for producing energy, while highly enriched uranium can be used to make a nuclear weapon.
Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful uses only, but the I.A.E.A. reported in May that, while it had no evidence that Iran was building a weapon, the country was stockpiling about 882 pounds of highly enriched uranium, which could enable the government to build multiple bombs.
Mr. Grossi, the I.A.E.A. director general, stressed in a statement on Friday the 'crucial importance of the I.A.E.A. discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible.'
Iranian lawmakers have stipulated two conditions for resuming cooperation, according to state media. One is that the safety of its nuclear program and scientists is secured and the second is an acknowledgment of what it says is its right under international law to enrich uranium.
At the same time, Iranian officials have been publicly signaling a willingness to return to negotiations with Washington.
'We are for diplomacy,' Iran's deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told NBC News on Thursday. 'We are for dialogue.'
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
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