Last week, the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Iran called upon the Group of Seven (G7) on June 16 to distance itself from “destructive policies of the past”, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said, referring to a G7 statement condemning Iran’s recent nuclear programme escalation.

On June 14, the G7 warned Iran against advancing its nuclear enrichment programme and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Any attempt to link the war in Ukraine to the bilateral cooperation between Iran and Russia is an act with only biased political goals,” Mr. Kanaani said, adding that some countries are “resorting to false claims to continue sanctions” against Iran.

Last week, the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors.

Iran responded by rapidly installing extra uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site and begun setting up others, according to a International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report.

Mr. Kanaani added Tehran would continue its “constructive interaction and technical cooperation” with the IAEA, but called its resolution “politically biased.”

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for three nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.

File picture of the International Atomic Energy Agency flag at the organisation’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria
| Photo Credit: AP

Iran has started up new cascades of advanced centrifuges and plans to install others in the coming weeks after facing criticism over its nuclear programme, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog said Friday. The U.S. called the moves “nuclear escalations”.

Spinning up new centrifuges further advances Iran’s nuclear programme, which already enriches uranium at near-weapons-grade levels and boasts a stockpile enough for several nuclear bombs if it chose to pursue them. However, the acknowledgement from the International Atomic Energy Agency did not include any suggestion Iran planned to go to higher enrichment levels amid wider tensions between Tehran and the West as the Israel-Hamas war rages in the Gaza Strip.

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The IAEA said its inspectors verified Monday that Iran had begun feeding uranium into three cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. Cascades are a group of centrifuges that spin uranium gas together to more quickly enrich the uranium.

So far, Iran has been enriching uranium in those cascades up to 2% purity. Iran already enriches uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Iran also plans to install 18 cascades of IR-2m centrifuges at Natanz and eight cascades of IR-6 centrifuges at its Fordo nuclear site. Each of these classes of centrifuges enrich uranium faster than Iran’s baseline IR-1 centrifuges, which remain the workhorse of the country’s atomic programme.

Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the decision. However, it comes after Iran threatened to take action following a vote earlier this month at the IAEA’s Board of Governors that censured Iran for failing to cooperate fully with the agency.

The decision immediately drew criticism from U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

“Iran aims to continue expanding its nuclear program in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “These planned actions further undermine Iran’s claims to the contrary. If Iran implements these plans, we will respond accordingly.”

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Mr. Miller did not elaborate on what steps the US and its allies might take. However, Iran already faces grinding economic sanctions from Washington and others that have deeply cut into its economy and sent its rial currency tumbling over recent years.

Since the collapse of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers following the U.S.’s unilateral withdraw from the accord in 2018, it has pursued nuclear enrichment just below weapons-grade levels. U.S. intelligence agencies and others assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program.

Iran, as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, has pledged to allow the IAEA to visit its atomic sites to ensure its program is peaceful. Tehran also agreed to additional oversight from the IAEA as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. However, for years it has curtailed inspectors’ access to sites while also not fully answering questions about other sites where nuclear material has been found in the past.

The IAEA’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, visited Iran in May in an effort to boost inspections, but there hasn’t been any major public change in Iran’s stance.

All this comes as the Islamic Republic also appears to be trying to contain the risk it faces from the US after launching an unprecedented attack on Israel. The assault — a response to a suspected Israeli strike on April 1 which killed two Guard generals and others in Damascus, Syria — has pushed a yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran out into the open.

Austria has declared two diplomats from the Russian embassy personae non gratae for actions “incompatible with their diplomatic status,” ordering them to leave the country within a week, Austria’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The move brings to 11 the number of Russian diplomats Austria has expelled since 2020 in four separate rounds. It is not clear whether the expulsions are connected.

Officials have said that some previous expulsions involved spying, but as before the Ministry gave no specifics.

“Two diplomats from the Russian embassy have acted in a manner that is incompatible with their diplomatic status,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, using its standard phrasing for such cases. They must leave the country by the end of March 19, it added.

Before Austria even announced the move, Russia already said it would retaliate. Its Foreign Ministry called the decision “groundless”, according to state news agency RIA.

After previous expulsions from Austria, Moscow has responded by expelling diplomats from the Austrian Embassy in Moscow, which has only a small fraction of the number of diplomats that Russia has stationed in Austria.

Vienna is a major diplomatic centre hosting the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Larger countries like Russia and the United States often have separate ambassadors to Austria, the OSCE and the U.N. organisations, each running an embassy or permanent mission.

Vienna, which was divided into Allied sectors after World War Two, has long had a reputation as a den of spies. The large diplomatic presence offers the opportunity to station intelligence agents there under a diplomatic cover granting them diplomatic immunity.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi attends a meeting with local officials and representatives from fishing and business groups in Iwaki, northeast of Tokyo, Wednesday, March 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The head of the U.N. atomic agency on March 12 emphasised to Japan’s government the importance of transparency in its ongoing discharges of treated radioactive wastewater at the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi also expressed support for increasing Japan’s nuclear capacity as the country looks to it as a stable, clean source of power.

Mr. Grossi is in Japan for the first time since releases of the treated water began in August. His visit comes one day after Japan marked 13 years since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima disaster.

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The 2011 disaster damaged the Fukushima plant’s power supply and reactor cooling functions, triggering triple meltdowns and causing large amounts of radioactive wastewater to accumulate. After more than a decade of cleanup work, the plant began discharging the water after treating it and diluting it with large amounts of seawater on August 24, starting a process that’s expected to take decades.

The discharges have been opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries including China, which banned all imports of Japanese seafood immediately after the release began. Japan has sought the IAEA’s help with safety monitoring and evaluation to allay concerns.

IAEA offers technical assistance to restart power plant

Mr. Grossi will examine the discharge and sampling facility on March 13 after meeting with the local residents. He last visited the plant in July after issuing an IAEA review predicting only negligible impact from the discharges. The IAEA comprehensive report later concluded that the discharges have satisfied international safety standards.

It is “very important to show the transparency of this process,” Mr. Grossi told Economy and Industry Minister Ken Saito.

He also offered Japan technical assistance to improve the idled Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan’s northcentral region of Niigata, which is run by the Fukushima Daiichi operator. It and the government are keen to restart it soon.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s No. 6 and No. 7 reactors had passed regulators’ safety tests for a restart, but they were suspended from making further preparations after safeguarding problems surfaced in 2021. Those lasted until December, when the regulators acknowledged improvement.

IAEA is sending a team of experts to the plant later this month to assist Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ effort to gain public trust. “We want to be of assistance in helping Japan’s nuclear capacity to be up and running as soon as possible,” Mr. Grossi told Mr. Saito.

The restart remains uncertain because it is subject to host community’s consent. The Jan. 1 earthquake in the nearby Noto region rekindled safety concerns and prompted nuclear regulators to order a review of evacuation plans around nuclear facilities nationwide.

Japan’s renewd push for nuclear energy

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has reversed earlier plans for a nuclear phaseout and is accelerating the use of nuclear power in response to rising fuel costs related to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and pressure to meet decarbonisation goals.

Mr. Grossi will meet with Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa on March 14 and is expected to discuss cooperation in nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, North Korea and Iran and the peaceful use of atomic energy. Japan also wants to provide financial support for the IAEA’s effort to protect Ukrainian nuclear plants from Russia’s war, officials said.

Earlier on March 12, Mr. Grossi in his meeting with Environment Minister Shintaro Ito pledged the IAEA’s cooperation in the disposal of radioactive soil that came out of decontamination across Fukushima. The soil has been in an interim storage facility in Fukushima. A government plan to recycle it for road construction and other public works after safety tests has met fierce protests. The government has promised a final disposal plan outside of the prefecture by 2045.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi and Director General of Russian nuclear company Rosatom Alexey Likhachev in Sochi, Russia, March 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi described his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week as “professional and frank”, the IAEA said on Friday, March 8, 2024.

It said the talks focused on the importance of reducing the still significant nuclear security risks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The United Nations (UN) nuclear chief on September 18 said he asked to meet Iran’s President on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to try to reverse Tehran’s “uncalled for” ban on “a very sizable chunk” of the agency’s inspectors.

Rafael Grossi stressed that the Iranian government’s removal of many agency cameras and electronic monitoring systems installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also make it impossible to give assurances about the country’s nuclear programme.

Mr. Grossi said he wrote to President Ebrahim Raisi telling him it is “very important” to meet about Tehran’s targeting of inspectors, including “some of the best and most experienced”.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” Mr. Grossi said in an interview with The Associated Press on September 18.

He also warned that escalating fighting is increasing the danger of a nuclear accident at Europe’s largest nuclear plant in Ukraine. Mr. Grossi said he is seeking to re-establish a dialogue with North Korea, which expelled UN nuclear weapons inspectors in 2009.

And he invited China to see how the IAEA tests treated water released from Japan’s Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant, which led Beijing to ban Japanese seafood.

The IAEA chief said Iran has the right to determine who enters the country, but he said he didn’t understand why Tehran was withdrawing authorisation for a “good number” of inspectors, which is “making my job much more difficult”. He called it a step in the wrong direction.

“It’s very difficult to get the expertise to go to very sophisticated uranium enrichment facilities with thousands of (centrifuge) cascades, lots of tubing and piping, and it requires … a lot of experience,” he explained. “So, when you start limiting that … I have to say, this is not good. Stop it!” Iran has denied impeding the work of IAEA inspectors though it has also been years since its experts have been able to examine surveillance footage.

The Vienna-based IAEA reported earlier this month that Iran had slowed the pace of enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels. That was seen as a sign that Tehran was trying to ease tensions after years of strain with the United States, and one that took place as the rivals were negotiating a prisoner swap and the release of billions in frozen Iranian assets — which all took place on Monday.

Since Iran started limiting the actions of IAEA inspectors a little over a year ago, Mr. Grossi said, the agency hasn’t been able to see how many centrifuges and parts needed to assemble them are being produced.

So when the IAEA has to draw a baseline of where Iran’s nuclear programme is, he said, “How do I do it?” Mr. Grossi said military operations are increasing near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is on the front line of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The June 6 destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Russian-controlled territory led to deadly flooding, ruined crops in one of the world’s breadbaskets and lowered the level of water used to cool Zaporizhzhia’s reactors.

“Complications are adding up,” Mr. Grossi said, “and making the safety of the plant very, very fragile.” Initially, he said he urged both sides to adopt a no-fire zone outside the plant. That became impossible. So he has been urging the Ukrainians and Russians not to attack any nuclear plant.

Zaporizhzhia is in a Russian-controlled area but is staffed mainly by Ukrainians. There are also some Russian experts and IAEA inspectors who from time to time have acted as “a buffer” and defused some tense situations, Mr. Grossi said.

The IAEA chief called North Korea’s growing nuclear programme “one of the most difficult issues we have in front of us”.

Since the expulsion of IAEA inspectors in 2009, Mr. Grossi said, the agency has followed what Pyongyang has done from afar. “North Korea has become a de facto nuclear weapon possessor state,” he said, and that is “not a good development”.

Mr. Grossi said North Korea’s programme, including enrichment and construction of new reactors, has been growing without international monitoring or assessment of its safety. He wouldn’t say who the IAEA is engaging with to try to “turn the page” with North Korea but did say: “I am optimistic.” As for China’s concerns about the water being discharged from Japan’s Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant, Mr. Grossi said IAEA daily monitoring shows the level of tritium, a radionucleide that could be problematic, is extremely low.

The IAEA chief said South Korea also had concerns about the water being discharged from Fukushima, which was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. He said he spoke to the President and Foreign Minister, and South Korea sent experts to see how the monitoring of the discharged water is being carried out.

Mr. Grossi said he wrote to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi a few days ago making a similar offer to explain the IAEA’s activities. He expressed hope that he could meet Wang in New York “to dispel doubts.” said Mr. Grossi: “I’m eager and available.”