IAEA chief says Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities may cause Tehran to pursue nuclear weapons

Iran told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, that an Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities may cause Iran to pursue nuclear weapons or abandon the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Grossi tells i24News in an interview with the network aired this evening.

Grossi says that such a strike by Israel “might have an amalgamating effect which would make a determination in the part of Iran to go to a nuclear weapon or to abandon the treaty on non-proliferation. I’m telling you this because they have told me.”

The IAEA chief comments on the challenges he believes Israel would face in striking the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites: “Certainly this program runs wide and deep. And when I say deep, I know what I’m saying. So many of these facilities are extremely well protected. This would require a very, very devastating force to affect it.”

He says he believes there is a chance for the United States and Iran to reach an agreement on the issue of uranium enrichment during their ongoing nuclear talks, which have reached a critical point recently as Washington awaits a counterproposal from Tehran.

Grossi explains that Iran possesses enough enriched uranium to produce several nuclear bombs, that a much stricter oversight mandate is needed, and asserts that his agency is not naive on this matter.

“We know exactly what we are doing. We are not in the business of, you know, putting things under the rug. For us, it is very important that the transparency is made and that we get to the bottom of things,” he says.

Grossi adds that “There is an international consensus” that Iran can not obtain nuclear weapons, and that he believes “the Iranians themselves are aware of this because we know the domino effect that having nuclear weapons in Iran would have in the region in a wider sense.”