UN nuclear agency doesn’t know status of new Iranian enrichment facility in Isfahan, chief says

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency does not know the status of the new Iranian enrichment facility in Isfahan that is in an underground nuclear complex, agency chief Rafael Grossi says.

“It is underground, but we haven’t visited it yet,” says Grossi, who is in Washington, DC, for a conference and to hold talks with officials from the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Iran informed the UN nuclear watchdog of the new facility in June and Grossi says his inspectors were in Isfahan later that month to see it but had to cancel the visit when the nuclear complex there was struck at the beginning of the 12-day war with Israel.

Grossi says because the inspectors had to cancel their visit, the agency does not know “whether it is simply an empty hall” or hosts concrete pads awaiting the installation of centrifuges – the machines that enriched uranium for power plants and nuclear weapons – or whether some centrifuges have been installed.

“There are many questions that we will only elucidate when we are able to go back,” he says.

A projectile hit an area near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant yesterday evening but caused ‌no damage or injuries, Iran told the IAEA.

Entrances to Iran’s underground and ​previously bombed uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz ‌were struck earlier in the US-Israeli military attacks on the country, the IAEA confirmed on March 3.