Iran is “not far” from having the atomic bomb, warned the general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEA), Rafael Grossi, before the interviews on Wednesday, April 16 in Tehran.
Western countries, the United States in mind and Israel have suspected that Iran want to acquire nuclear weapons. Tehran rejects these accusations and defends a right to nuclear for civil purposes, especially for energy.
“It’s like a puzzle, they (the Iranians) have the pieces and one day they could assemble them. There is still a way to go before arriving there. But they are not far away, it must be recognized,” said Rafael Grossi in an interview with the newspaper that Monde published Wednesday.
New conversations between Iran and the United States
The head of the OIEA arrived during the day in Tehran, before new conversations between Iran and the United States in the Iranian nuclear program, scheduled for Saturday in Rome.
The IEA, the UN Nuclear Gendarme based in Vienna, is responsible for verifying the peaceful nature of the Iran’s nuclear program.
“It is not enough to tell the international community ‘that we have no nuclear weapons’ to create you. We must be able to verify,” Rafael Grossi added in this interview.
Rafael Grossi met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Described the maintenance of “important.” “Cooperation with OIEA is essential to provide credible guarantees about the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program at a time when diplomacy has become urgently,” he said in X.
The head of the OIEA must have discussions on Thursday with the Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami.
The indirect discussions, under the Odesian mediation, were launched on April 12 in Mascato by Abbas Araghchi and the emissary of President Donald Trump for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
They will continue on Saturday in Rome, the television of the Iranian state said Wednesday, the information confirmed to the AFP by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A “risk of compromising any opening”
Before these new indirect discussions between two enemy countries that have not had diplomatic relations since 1980, Abbas Araghchi said the question of uranium enrichment “was not negotiable.”
He seemed to react to a statement by Steve Witkoff, who said Tuesday that “Iran must stop his nuclear enrichment and militarization program, and eliminate it.”
This statement appears on the back of his comments made the day before on the Fox News channel: then he refrained from claiming a total dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program.
“In diplomacy, such change runs the risk of compromising any openness,” punished the Iranian diplomacy spokesman Estmaïl Baghaï.
Abbas Araghchi is expected on Thursday in Russia for nuclear discussions. Vladimir Putin will be transmitted to the Russian president, a written message from the Iranian Supreme Guide.
Source: BFM TV
