Vienna, June 30 (UNI) Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that while the US strikes have caused massive damage to the Iranian nuclear sites, they didn’t fully destroy them, potentially enabling Tehran to proceed with enriching uranium in “just a matter of months".



Grossi’s statement directly contradicts the stance of US President Donald Trump, who had said that the Iranian nuclear project was pushed back by decades, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the centrifuges at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan were severely damaged, pushing the program by several years, CBS News reported.



In an interview with the media agency’s ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan’ programme, the IAEA chief, giving his stance on the varying assessments said “This hourglass approach in weapons of mass destruction is not a good idea.



“The capacities they have are there. 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. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”



Grossi added that while the watchdog group’s investigations did not hint at a nuclear weapons program, the uranium enrichment was way beyond needed for civilian use. The situation was further made complicated by Tehran’s refusal to answer some “very important questions.”



Verifying Grossi’s statement of severe damage on Iranian facilities, a US official told CNN “As Rafael Grossi said just days ago, the difference between Iran’s nuclear program before and after Operation Midnight Hammer is ‘night and day,’ and a ‘very serious level of damage’ was done.



“Iran has no air defences, so the idea that they can just start rebuilding a nuclear weapons program is nonsense. As the President (Donald Trump) has said, Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon,” added the official.



Meanwhile, post the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Tehran has officially withdrawn all government cooperation with the IAEA, accusing it of political bias, non-objectivity, and even sharing data which enabled Tel Aviv in targeting Iran’s chief nuclear scientists.



There have even been death threats issued against Grossi in wake of the ceasefire, amid the highly anti-IAEA sentiments in the country with Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, stating that Tehran could also rethink its membership of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibits signatories from developing nuclear weapons.







UNI ANV RN