Despite damage from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, Iran likely will be able to enrich uranium “in a matter of months,” U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said in an interview with CBS News on Saturday.
“The capacities they have are there …, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”
While noting that his International Atomic Energy Agency does not make military evaluations, Grossi said that “it is clear that there has been severe damage, but it’s not total damage” following the airstrikes.
The Islamic Republic also retains its “industrial and technological capacities,” Grossi emphasized, saying that the regime could start enriching uranium again, “if they so wish.”
Another key question that remains is whether Iran was able to relocate some or all of its estimated 900-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium before the U.S. military struck three of its nuclear facilities.
The uranium in question had been enriched to 60%, a short technical step away from 90% weapons-grade.
Grossi told CBS on Saturday: “We don’t know where this material could be.
“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. If we don’t get that clarification, this will continue to be hanging, you know, over our heads as a potential problem,” the IAEA chief warned.
Grossi in the interview urged Tehran and Washington to resume nuclear talks, while stressing that the Islamic regime should allow his agency to send inspectors to inspect the sites damaged during the 12-day war.
“We have to go back to the table and have a technically sound solution to this. Otherwise, this will come hit us again, in terms of a situation which is not well clarified. And this is an opportunity,” Grossi said.
The U.S. military attacked Iran’s three main nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan on June 22. President Donald Trump has insisted that the airstrikes obliterated the nuclear sites, including the one in Fordow, constructed deep underground.
An Israel Atomic Energy Commission report on Wednesday concluded that the U.S. airstrikes targeting the latter enrichment plant destroyed critical infrastructure, rendering the facility “inoperable.”
The IAEC assessment said that the American assault, “combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program,” set back Tehran’s abilities to develop nuclear weapons “by many years.”
“The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material,” continued the report, the conclusions of which were published by the Prime Minister’s Office shortly after the White House shared them with reporters in Washington on Wednesday morning.
Iran’s parliament has voted to halt its already shaky relationship with the IAEA, while lawmakers are working on legislation that could lead to Tehran leaving the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.