Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), urged global powers to resume nuclear negotiations with the Iranian regime and “not lose sight of the risks posed by its stockpiling of enriched uranium while attention has turned to the war between Israel and Hamas.”
In an interview with the Financial Times published on November 30, Rafael Grossi said that “There needs to be some recreation of a system of dialogue with Iran.”
“Attention . . . may of course be on something else. But this doesn’t solve the issue. It may even make them more acute, in the sense that there’s a sense of a certain indifference,…People may not be looking at [Iran’s nuclear ambitions], but the problem exists.” Grossi said
Tensions between the Iranian regime and the West have escalated following Hamas’ devastating attack on Israel on October 7. The regime supports Hamas and several paramilitary groups that are essentially proxies of the Iranian regime throughout the region.
Grossi said that negotiations with Tehran may require a new framework, rather than an attempt to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is formally known.
Grossi continued,“Trying to put [a nuclear deal] back into the JCPOA box wouldn’t work… You can still call it a JCPOA but it should be a JCPOA 2.0 or something because you have to adapt.”
He also said that the situation surrounding the Iranian regime’s nuclear program is “very uncertain” and called on countries to “sit down and re-engage.”
Five days before Grossi’s recent remarks, the AFP agency reported that Western powers have no inclination to escalate tensions against the Iranian regime.
The AFP wrote that Western powers, fearing further escalation in the Middle East, have no inclination to take a tough stance against the regime at a time when it is advancing its nuclear program and simultaneously reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
According to the report, in a situation where the IAEA Board of Governors of the Agency says that recent actions by the Iranian regime have moved unprecedented boundaries, it has refrained from presenting a mandatory resolution.
