Tehran (TDI): The United Nations nuclear watchdog head Rafael Grossi warned on Wednesday that Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb, shortly before he arrived in Tehran for negotiations.
Western nations including the US have long accused Tehran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, an allegation Iran has consistently denied, insisting that its program is for peaceful civilian purposes.
“It’s like a puzzle. Iran has the pieces, and one day it could eventually put them together,” Grossi told French newspaper Le Monde in an interview published on Wednesday.
“There is still a way to go before they get there. But they are not far off, that has to be acknowledged,” he said.
The UN watchdog was tasked with overseeing Tehran’s nuclear program and its compliance with a 2015 nuclear agreement which collapsed three years later when the US withdrew from it during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“It’s not enough to tell the global community ‘we don’t have nuclear weapons’ for them to believe you. We should be able to verify,” said Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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He arrived on Wednesday in Tehran and called on Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. He is also likely to meet Mohammad Eslami, who heads Iran’s nuclear energy agency.
Grossi said that his meeting with Araghchi was important.
“Cooperation with IAEA is essential to provide trustworthy assurances about the peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear program at a time when diplomacy is urgently needed,” he said in a statement.
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Grossi’s trip comes ahead of a second round of negotiations between Iran and the US on Saturday, a week after the two nations held their highest-level discussions since Trump abandoned the nuclear agreement in 2018.
Both sides described the first meeting “constructive”.
