Nuclear watchdog agency's general director says Iran's capabilities suffered "severe damage"
Iran's nuclear capabilities suffered "severe damage" in last week's U.S. airstrikes but not "total damage," said the man in charge of the world's global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. "One cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there."
"It is clear that there has been severe damage, but it's not total damage, first of all," IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "And secondly, Iran has the capacities there; industrial and technological capacities. So if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again."
The U.S. launched three strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities on June 21, following more than a week of Israeli attacks, which President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear facilities.
But Grossi's comments appeared to support an early assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which suggested the strikes had only set back Iran's nuclear program by months. The Trump administration has slammed the DIA's assessment as "low confidence," and Hegseth and other officials on Thursday went after the media for reporting on a "leaked" report.
At a briefing Thursday, reporters questioned Hegseth repeatedly on whether Iran had moved its stocks of enriched uranium before the Israeli and U.S. strikes began. The defense secretary responded that he was "not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be — moved or otherwise."
Grossi on Sunday said Iran did not share that they had any plans to move the enriched uranium, but at the same time "there was no physical time" for Iran to share that information.
The IAEA director general also conceded that it's "logical to presume that when [Iran] announce[s] that they are going to be taking protective measures" that moving the enriched uranium "could be part of it." But he also emphasized that "this is why it's so important, first of all, for Iran to allow our inspectors to continue their indispensable work as soon as possible."
Brennan pushed Grossi that since it's unclear if the uranium had been moved and all the centrifuges cannot be accounted for, there's an open question that Iran could still "sprint towards a bomb…if they wanted to." Grossi said he didn't want to be an "alarmist," but "we need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened."
"Iran had a very vast ambitious program, and part of it may still be there, and if not, there is also the self-evident truth that the knowledge is there," Grossi said. "The industrial capacity is there. Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology, as is obvious. So you cannot disinvent this. You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have. It's a huge country, isn't it? So I think this should be the incentive that we all must have to understand that military operations or not, you are not going to solve this in a definitive way militarily."
Grossi confirmed that his IAEA inspectors were never able to verify Iran's claims that its nuclear program was only for peaceful ends and that it was not trying to develop a weapon.
"We didn't see a program that was aiming in that direction, but at the same time, they were not answering very, very important questions that were pending," Grossi said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Saturday that there were calls in Iran for the arrest and execution of Grossi.
When asked about alleged threats against nuclear inspectors, Iran's ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, said in a separate appearance on "Face the Nation" that Iran is not threatening nuclear inspectors, including Grossi.
Nuclear inspectors "are in Iran," Iravani said. He said they are in a "safe condition," but "they cannot have access to our site."
Iravani also said that since Iran is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nuclear "enrichment is our right, and an inalienable right, and we want to implement this right."
Iravani added that he did not think the enrichment will "ever stop."
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