IAEA Chief: Iran Could Restart Uranium Enrichment Within Months

The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has warned that Iran could potentially resume uranium enrichment activities within just a few months, even after recent strikes by the United States and Israel damaged multiple nuclear facilities, according to CBS News.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged the nuclear sites suffered “serious” damage, although he said full details were not yet available. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump declared the attacks had pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “decades.”

Still, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi emphasized that not everything had been destroyed. “Some is still standing,” he told CBS.

Grossi explained that Iran could potentially restart operations soon. “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” he said in a Friday interview, the transcript of which was released Saturday.

One unresolved issue, Grossi noted, is whether Iran managed to move any portion of its estimated 900-pound (408.6-kilo) stockpile of highly enriched uranium prior to the attacks.

That uranium has been refined to a 60 percent level, well beyond what’s needed for civilian purposes, though still below weapons-grade. If further enriched, it could be enough for more than nine nuclear warheads.

“We don’t know where this material could be,” Grossi told CBS.

He added, “So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved. So there has to be, at some point, a clarification.”

In the meantime, Iran’s parliament has voted to halt cooperation with the IAEA. Tehran also denied Grossi’s request to inspect the impacted sites, particularly the Fordo enrichment facility, which was targeted in last Sunday’s US airstrike.

“We need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened,” Grossi stressed.