UN Watchdog Chief In Israel Over Concerns About Iran’s Nuclear Progress

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh on Thursday rejected remarks in a statement issued at the end of the 152nd session of GCC's Ministerial Council in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on Wednesday. 

In their statement, the GCC described Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and regional strategies as the main “challenge” facing the member states, criticizing the Islamic Republic’s support for “terrorism” as well as its “destabilizing behavior” across the region.

Khatibzadeh said such a "threadbare and destructive” statement indicates a “completely wrong approach” adopted by some member states and their “strategic confusion” vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have held several rounds of talks since 2021 to improve their ties, severed since 2016, with no major results so far.

Commenting on the request by some GCC member states to be part of the Vienna talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, Khatibzadeh said raising such issues demonstrates the depth of the council’s failure to see the realities as the JCPOA and the UN Resolution 2231 have made it clear which countries are the signatories to the international treaty and can take part in the negotiations.

A tweet issued by Beijing’s permanent mission to UN bodies in Vienna cited a foreign ministry spokesman opposing “relevant countries’ moves to pressure” Tehran by raising a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) quarterly board meeting due June 6-10.

Although United States State Department spokesman Ned Price appeared lukewarm over the prospect Wednesday, saying just that discussions with “allies and partners” were underway, the tone changed in the Thursday briefing. Price said, “we can confirm that we plan to join the UK, France, and Germany in seeking a resolution focused on the need for Iran to fully cooperate with the IAEA.”

The US and European states have reportedly held back from such a move over the past year so as not to undermine talks in Vienna aimed at restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

But recent disclosures from Israel – purporting to show Iran using pilfered IAEA documents to “systematically evade nuclear probes” – have energized critics of the JCPOA and of the US approach. John Bolton, National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, earlier this week slammed the Biden administration for being “unable or unwilling to admit failure in its humiliating pursuit of America rejoining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.”

Thursday’s statement from China argued that a “confrontational approach” at the IAEA board meeting would “undermine cooperation” between Iran and the IAEA and “disrupt [the] negotiation process.” Price insisted Wednesday that an agreement on restoring the JCPOA was within reach.

Talks remain on hold

China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the US are all among the 35 members of the IAEA board. Even if a critical resolution passed, it would meet opposition, and would not – as was the case in 2005-6 – be part of a process leading to Iran’s condemnation and sanction at the UN Security Council, where both China and Russia hold vetoes.

Iran has said a recent IAEA report suggesting it had not answered the agency’s questions over the pre-2003 nuclear work did not “reflect the reality of the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA.” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reportedly warned Thursday – during a phone call with his Singaporean counterpart Vivian Balakrishnan – that “political interference” in IAEA affairs, meaning a resolution at the board, would be “unconstructive.”

Amir-Abdollahian said the “technical progress” from “a mutually satisfactory agreement” with IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi should not be upset by “a hasty political statement.”

But some analysts have argued that Iran has deliberately played up disagreements with the IAEA, and accelerated its nuclear program, to raise pressure in the Vienna talks. The recent agency report that Iran has 43.3kg (95lb) of uranium enriched to 60 percent, up nearly 10kg (22lb) in three months, clearly illustrated Iran’s growing breaches of the JCPOA, whose limits it began exceeding in 2019 after the US in 2018 left the agreement and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

Both opponents and supporters of the JCPOA argue their arguments are strengthened by Iran accumulating near sufficient highly-enriched uranium to fashion a crude nuclear device. Either way, talks to revive the 2015 deal remain on hold.

The independent monitoring service, which tracks and reports shipments and storage of crude oil, said in a Twitter post on Thursday that they have a visual confirmation the hijacked Greek Suezmax tanker Prudent Warrior is in the anchorage of Bandar Abbas in the southern Hormozgan province and the other Suezmax vessel, the Delta Poseidon is being held north of Larak island near the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' navy seized the two vessels during helicopter-launched raids on May 27 in the Persian Gulf, a week after the confiscation of Iranian oil from a tanker held off the Greek coast and its transfer to the US. 

Criticized by many former and current officials as well US congresspeople for a lenient Tehran diplomacy that has led to the increase of the Islamic Republic’s oil revenues, President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently stepped up its effort to put pressure on Iran’s crude exports, which have been sanctioned since the former President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018.

The Vienna talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled mainly because of Iran’s demand for the US to remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its terrorism list (FTO) and the recent missile attacks have shed more doubts whether Washington would take such a step.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with his Israeli counterpart Dr. Eyal Hulata and their respective senior representatives from foreign policy, military and intelligence agencies in Washington on Wednesday.

The meeting was part of coordination efforts within the framework of the US-Israeli Strategic Consultative Group (SGC).

Israel has been voicing concern over the Biden Administration policy of reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, JCPOA, which would mean lifting economic sanctions, while Tehran pursues an aggressive regional policy against US allies in the region.

The year-long negotiations in Vienna to revive the deal stalled in March and Iran is said to have continued uranium enrichment to the point of now having enough fissile material to produce a bomb.

“The officials committed to coordinate on efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and toward deterring Iran’s aggressive regional activities. They also discussed economic and diplomatic steps to achieve these goals and reviewed ongoing cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli militaries,” the White House said.

David Albright, a former United Nations nuclear inspector told Iran International Wednesday that Iran has reached a nuclear breakout point and much more pressure is needed to dissuade Tehran from pursuing weaponization. One part of such a pressure policy should be more US support for Israel and other allies in the region.

In an interview on Wednesday, David Albright, founder and president of Institute for Science and International Security said the Islamic Republic has accumulated enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuckear weapon. He told Iran International's Fardad Farahzad, “Iran has reached this critical period where its breakout time is zero. And what that means is that now it has enough highly enriched uranium to fashion a nuclear weapon.”

However, assembling a nuclear weapon would take some additional time, Albright said and added, “But it may not be as long as some have argued. We don’t know how quickly Iran could make nuclear weapons today.”

While the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been monitoring Iran’s overt nuclear activities focused on uranium enrichment, the agency does not have full access to inspect every suspected military facility that might be engaged in weapons design and testing.

Albright, a physicist and an IAEA inspector in the 1990s, explained that the world does not know what kind of a nuclear device Iran would decide to make.

“They may choose to make a crude nuclear explosive to detonate underground, or to deliver it crudely or through crude methods like truck or ship. That could happen over the course of several months, less than six months. They may want, on the other hand, to focus on just building a warhead for a ballistic missile; that could take longer, a year or two. So again, the critical thing is that they have reached the zero-breakout time,” he explained.

Referring to Iran’s clandestine AMAD nuclear program in the 2000s, Albright said the plan was to accumulate enough fissile material to build five bombs, but once the secret was disclosed in 2002, Tehran abandoned the scheme under great international pressure. “So, in a way it's closer to nuclear weapons now than it was in the height of its crash nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s. So, this is a major milestone,” the former IAEA inspector said.

Iran has demonstrated that it could advance quickly in the absence of international restrictions on its nuclear program, Albright said, referring to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, or any new version of it.

In addition to Iran's ability to quickly resurrect and advance its program, the JCPOA is “is very time-bound,” he said, referring to the sunset clauses of the original agreement, adding, “It doesn't last very long, so it's a temporary fix-at best. And there are some problems in getting in that deal.”

To stop Iran at this juncture could also take another strategy Albright said – the strategy of increasing pressure on Tehran. “It's not the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign, it's much more. It would involve Europeans and the US and other allies working very closely together to increase pressure on Iran. It would involve stigmatizing Iran even more; like Russia's being stigmatized.”

Albright went on to say that a strategy of intense pressure would involve more support for Israel and other allied countries in the Middle East, “to push harder against Iran.”

He predicted that whether now or in the future the time will come for a tough pressure policy to stop the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear power.

“So, I think that's a path, and that's probably the path we're headed on. Maybe a nuclear deal could postpone this path, being launched for a few years perhaps. But there are real obstacles to getting that deal. And I think we are now headed into a period where pressure is going to increase on Iran.”