Iran says UN Resolution 2231 has formally ended

Rafael Grossi said information available to the agency indicates that most of the material is stored at known nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Fordow, and to a lesser extent in Natanz, though a small amount could have been taken elsewhere.

In the interview published on Saturday, he said inspectors would gain access to these sites only “when Iran perceives a national interest” in allowing it.

The IAEA estimates Iran possesses more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium — enough for several nuclear weapons if further refined.

Grossi added that the three facilities had been severely damaged in Israeli and US strikes in June.

While Tehran denies pursuing nuclear weapons, the UN nuclear watchdog's chief said concerns over its potential capabilities “have not been fully dispelled.”

He urged renewed diplomacy, saying, “Sitting together at one table would save us the danger of another round of bombardments and attacks.”

Israel and the United States attacked Iranian nuclear sites in a 12-day June war, setting back the nuclear program but leaving its fate unresolved.

Tehran has since declined to allow IAEA inspectors to resume their inspections.

Last month, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran's inventory of highly enriched uranium is buried under rubble following US and Israeli strikes on the country's nuclear facilities.

In his post on X, Araghchi said "the exhibition in the British Parliament of a drone falsely and maliciously attributed to Iran is a pathetic scene staged by the Israeli lobby and its sponsors.”

Responding in Polish, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said it was “nice that Iran’s foreign minister writes in Polish,” but added it “would have been better not to sell drones and licenses for their production to Russia while it was already waging aggression against Ukraine.”

He said Iran should instead “rebuild the Persian civilization that once amazed the world.”

British MP Tom Tugendhat accused Tehran of aiding Russia and Yemen’s Houthis “in murdering others abroad,” saying Iran’s rulers should “focus on the country they’re destroying at home” instead of interfering overseas.

Former US governor Jeb Bush, who chairs the US advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, also called Araghchi’s post “pathetic” and accused Iran of sponsoring “terror militias” while failing to provide its people with electricity and water.

Mark Wallace, the CEO of UANI which organized the drone display, said the exhibit “revealed the regime for what it is: the leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

Wallace accused Araghchi and Iran’s leadership of sending “murderous suicide drones around the world killing and maiming the citizens of over 80 countries.”

The display was held on Tuesday at the British parliament in London and attended by Western and Ukrainian officials.

Following the display, Iran summoned Poland’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest Sikorski’s participation in the event.

Iran denies supplying drones for use in the war, saying it sold a limited number to Russia before the invasion began.

Western governments and Ukraine say Shahed-type drones, designed in Iran and now produced in Russia under the name Geran, have become central to Moscow’s air assaults.

“It started probably with Soleimani. He was a mastermind who did a lot of bad things,” Trump said in a Fox News interview, referring to the late Quds Force commander.

“He’s the father of the roadside bomb that would blow up and maim so many of our great soldiers,” he added.

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in January 2020 on Trump’s orders.

The US president said the turning point that paved the way for the Gaza peace earlier this month came in June when US B-2 bombers carried out what he called a “beautiful military operation” against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“They flew for 37 hours, went into Iran’s airspace, and bombed the hell out of it,” he said. “When we destroyed their nuclear capability, they no longer became the bully of the Middle East.”

He said the US operation, along with Israeli strikes on Iran, made possible what he described as peace beyond Gaza.

“We wouldn’t have been able to make the deal we just made, which is basically peace in the Middle East beyond Gaza,” Trump said.

The ceasefire mediated in early October by the United States, Egypt, Turkey and Qatar put an end to over two years of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which started in response to Hamas's October 7 attack.

It was a rare moment of honesty — and a metaphor for a deeper failure in Western journalism. For decades, many correspondents have mistaken access for understanding and permission for credibility.

This reporting perpetuates the illusion that a “moderate” or “reformist” faction within the clerical regime is always on the brink of pursuing a more friendly policy toward the West — if only Washington and its partners would be more conciliatory.

At the same time, this coverage conceals the essential truth that a younger, connected, and defiantly secular generation rejects religious dictatorship.

To report from Iran, Western journalists must operate under state supervision. Their “fixers” are often regime-approved minders who decide which families they can meet, which streets they can visit, and what stories they can tell. The price of defiance is expulsion. Most choose to stay, and so they comply.

The result is journalism that reports through the regime’s lens. Coverage mirrors Tehran’s narrative while ignoring its contradictions.

When Iran invited Western media to cover the recent 12-day war with Israel, many major outlets accepted. Yet none mentioned the most visible fact on Tehran’s streets: women walking unveiled in courageous defiance of the law and regime threats.

Instead, their dispatches focused narrowly on civilian casualties, using regime-selected witnesses and identical talking points. Access was preserved; truth was not.

Since 1979, Western coverage has lagged a decade behind Iran’s reality.

In the early years of the revolution, reporters portrayed a nation united behind Ayatollah Khomeini, ignoring the liberals, nationalists, and religious dissenters who opposed him.

Two decades later, President Mohammad Khatami was cast as proof that “reformers” were emerging inside the system. In fact, his 1997 victory was a bottom-up protest vote, not a top-down project of change.

Ever since, journalists have recycled the same script: “moderates” versus “hardliners.” They still describe every election as a “battle for Iran’s future,” though every candidate operates within red lines drawn by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The 2015 nuclear deal was touted as the triumph of moderation under President Hassan Rouhani — yet it was conceived and authorized by Khamenei himself.

While foreign correspondents chase factional drama, Iran’s people have transformed. A younger, connected, and defiantly secular generation has rejected clerical control.

The revolt of Iranian women — from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022–23 to daily acts of unveiled defiance — represents the most sustained challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding.

But these stories are rarely told. At their height, protests command the attention of Western journalists. When they abate, often because of bloody suppression, it is back to the old story about alleged “moderates.”

When Western correspondents appear on air from Tehran wearing the compulsory hijab, they explain it as “respect for local culture.” But there is nothing cultural about coercion. Millions of Iranian women are risking imprisonment to defy that law, while foreign journalists are complicit in its perpetuation.

There are exceptions. VICE News correspondent Isobel Yeung chose honesty over access in her 2023 documentary on post-Mahsa Amini Iran. She’s unlikely to receive another visa. Meanwhile, the same media that rail against limits on press briefings in Washington submit meekly to the censorship of a theocracy.

This is more than a journalistic sin; it’s a strategic failure. Policymakers rely on the press to gauge Iran’s internal dynamics. When the media misread the country, so do the governments that read them.

Washington and Europe have spent years betting on “moderates” who don’t exist, negotiating with powerless presidents, and failing to see the possibility that the Islamic Republic will collapse from within.

Ultimately, those who pay the price are Iranians themselves.

Jon Snow’s line — “They whistle, and we go” — should be engraved above every newsroom desk that covers Iran. It captures the moral inversion of access journalism: the more the regime whistles, the faster the press runs.

Iran today is not the country Western reporters still describe. It is a nation where millions quietly rebel, where women lead a moral revolution, and where a dictatorship survives because it guns down dissenters while outsiders echoing the Islamic Republic’s preferred narrative.

The choice for Western journalists is clear: keep obeying the whistle — or finally listen to the voices on the street.

Hajibabaei said Iran “firmly supports the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people” and the creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

He urged Muslim unity against what he described as Israel’s “decades-long impunity for war crimes.”

Speaking at the 151st IPU Assembly -- which focuses on humanitarian norms and inclusive democracy -- Hajibabaei warned that any temporary ceasefire should not mean “forgetting justice or accountability.”

He added that global action was needed to prosecute those responsible for crimes in Gaza and said Islamic solidarity was key to achieving “a just and lasting peace for Palestine.”