UN nuclear watchdog warns Iran is ‘pressing the gas pedal’ on uranium enrichment

IAEA chief Grossi urges diplomacy between US, Iran on nuclear issue; UN chief pushes Iran to renounce nuclear weapons

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Iran is “pressing the gas pedal” on its enrichment of uranium to near weapons grade, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday, adding that Iran’s recently announced acceleration in enrichment was starting to take effect.

Grossi said last month that Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would “dramatically” accelerate the enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, closer to the roughly 90% of weapons-grade.

Western powers called the step a serious escalation and said there was no civil justification for enriching to that level and that no other country had done so without producing nuclear weapons. Iran, which frequently threatens to destroy Israel, has said its program is entirely peaceful and it has the right to enrich uranium to any level it wants.

“Before it was (producing) more or less seven kilograms (of uranium enriched to up to 60%) per month, now it’s above 30 or more than that. So I think this is a clear indication of an acceleration. They are pressing the gas pedal,” Grossi told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

According to an International Atomic Energy Agency yardstick, about 42 kilograms (93 pounds) of uranium enriched to that level is enough in principle, if enriched further, for one nuclear bomb. Grossi said Iran currently had about 200 kilograms of uranium enriched to up to 60%.

Still, he said it would take time to install and bring online the extra centrifuges – machines that enrich uranium – but that the acceleration was starting to happen.

In this March 30, 2005 file photo, an Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

“We are going to start seeing steady increases from now,” he said.

Grossi has called for diplomacy between Iran and the administration of new US President Donald Trump, who in his first term, pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that had imposed strict limits on Iran’s atomic activities. That deal has since unraveled.

“One can gather from the first statements from President Trump and some others in the new administration that there is a disposition, so to speak, to have a conversation and perhaps move into some form of an agreement,” he said.

Separately, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at Davos that Iran must make a first step toward improving relations with countries in the region and the United States by making it clear it does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.

“The most relevant question is Iran and relations between Iran, Israel and the United States,” Guterres said as he discussed the situation in the Middle East at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Here my hope is that the Iranians understand that it is important to once and for all make it clear that they will renounce to have nuclear weapons, at the same time that they engage constructively with the other countries of the region.”

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