‘Help us,’ IAEA chief urges Iran ahead of meetings on nuclear program

BAKU, Azerbaijan — UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi appeals to Iran’s leadership to take steps to resolve longstanding issues with his agency a day before he arrives in the Iranian capital for crunch talks over its nuclear program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency head has for months sought progress with Iran on issues including a push for more monitoring cooperation at nuclear sites and an explanation of uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

But little has come from Grossi’s efforts and with the return of US President-elect Donald Trump, who is widely expected to restore a maximum-pressure policy on Iran, Grossi’s trip tomorrow should provide indications of how Iran wants to proceed in the coming months.

“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 tells Reuters on the sidelines of the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Iran has stepped up nuclear activity since 2019, after Trump during his first term abandoned a 2015 deal Iran had reached with world powers under which it curbed enrichment and restored tough US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Iran’s work on enrichment has been seen by the West as a disguised effort to develop nuclear weapons capability.

Tehran is now enriching uranium to up to 60 percent fissile purity, close to the roughly 90% required for a nuclear bomb. It has enough higher-enriched uranium to produce about four nuclear bombs if refined further, according to an IAEA yardstick.

Iran has long denied any nuclear bomb ambitions, saying it is enriching uranium for civilian energy uses only.