Iran says UN inspectors visited its nuclear sites last week

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Inspectors of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited Iranian nuclear sites last week, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday, according to state media, a week after the IAEA urged Iran to “seriously improve” cooperation with the international body.

The IAEA has carried out about a dozen inspections in Iran since hostilities with Israel in June, but last week noted that it had not been given access to nuclear facilities such as Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, which were bombed by the United States.

“As long as we are a member of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons), we will abide by our commitments, and just last week, IAEA inspectors visited several nuclear facilities, including the Tehran Research Reactor,” Esmaeil Baghaei said, without naming the others.

Last week, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that Iran must “seriously improve” cooperation with the UN inspectors to avoid heightening tensions with the West.

“You cannot say, ‘I remain within the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons treaty,’ and then not comply with obligations,” Grossi said.

Grossi also reiterated the agency’s belief that most of Iran’s supply of enriched uranium survived the country’s 12-day war with Israel and is still being kept inside the damaged nuclear facilities.

“The damage was vast, but the assessment that we have is that most, if not all, the uranium enriched at 60 percent — but also at 20%, at 5% and at 2% — is there,” Grossi said.

Iranian officials have claimed the IAEA provided a justification for Israel’s bombing of nuclear and military sites, which began the day after the IAEA board voted to declare Iran in violation of obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel said its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program in June was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy Israel.

Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, though it has been enriching uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, while regularly threatening to flatten Israeli cities.

According to a Sunday report in The New York Times, another war between the Middle Eastern powerhouses is “only a matter of time,” citing regional officials and experts as believing that Israeli and US strikes caused less damage to Tehran’s nuclear facilities than previously thought, and that both countries are preparing for the prospect of another round of conflict.

Other factors make another war likely, the report said. Among them is an ongoing impasse between the United States and Iran, which engaged in several rounds of talks before the US joined Israel’s bombing campaign in June. In addition, the 2015 nuclear deal brokered between Iran, the US and European countries expired recently, triggering heavy sanctions on Iran.

Those factors, coupled with intensive Iranian work on a new enrichment site it refuses to give international inspectors access to, make many in the Gulf think that another Israeli attack is “almost inevitable,” the report added.

US President Donald Trump has warned that he could order fresh attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites should Tehran try to restart operations at facilities bombed in June.