Director General of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that the nuclear watchdog did not consider the area of Parchin in Iran “a nuclear facility” after Israel claimed it hit a component of Iran’s nuclear program there in an October strike.
“We don’t have any information that would confirm presence of nuclear material” in Parchin, Grossi told reporters in Vienna. “As far as the IAEA is concerned, we do not see this as a nuclear facility.”
What happened: Grossi acknowledged that the site “could have been involved in the past in some activities.”
Iran and the IAEA say the alleged active nuclear site within the Parchin military complex, the Taleghan 2 facility, shut down in 2003. But US and Israeli intelligence allegedly suggests that activities such as computer modeling, metallurgy and explosives research started up in Parchin earlier this year.
Responding to these reports, Grossi said, “We don’t have any fact that can substantiate this. Maybe they do, but we don’t. So I cannot say there was activity because we don’t have any information that would substantiate this idea.”
Background: Axios reported on Friday, citing three US officials and one current and one former Israeli official, that Israel’s Oct. 26 airstrike on Iran hit the Taleghan 2 facility. Israel’s strike, according to Axios, destroyed key equipment used to develop the chemical explosives used to trigger a nuclear weapon.
The Israeli strike “will make it much harder for Iran to develop a nuclear explosive device if it chooses to do so,” Axios cited two Israeli officials as saying.
A US official also told Axios that in Parchin, Iran “conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a weapon. It was a top-secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
In a Tuesday speech to the Knesset, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed reports that Israel’s strike had hit an Iranian nuclear site. While not naming the site specifically, Netanyahu alluded to the Axios report, saying, “It’s not a secret, it has been published,” and “There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit.”
Netanyahu emphasized, though, that Iran’s nuclear “program itself, its capacity to act here, has not yet been thwarted,” and added, “We’ve delayed it … but it has progressed.”
Know more: At a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors Wednesday, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the US introduced a resolution to censure Iran. The board is expected to vote on the resolution on Thursday, diplomatic sources told AFP.
That day, reports circulated citing confidential IAEA documents as saying that that Iran offered to cap its stock of uranium enriched to 60% (a small step from nuclear weapons-grade enrichment of 90%) at 185 kilograms (around 407 pounds) and offered to allow four more inspectors to monitor its nuclear development in order to prevent the IAEA resolution. Iran has already begun preparations to cap its stock of enriched uranium.
Grossi on Wednesday called Iran’s offer “a concrete step in the right direction.”
“I attach importance to the fact that for the first time … since the distancing of Iran from its past obligations, they are taking a different direction,” he said.
Yet the potential passage of the censure resolution may shift Iran’s position. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Grossi in a phone call that Iran “will respond to the unconstructive measures at the IAEA Board of Governors’ session,” according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.