Tehran ‘openly threatening head of IAEA,’ FM Sa’ar says

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed Iran on Saturday after one of its top political figures apparently threatened the director general of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Rafael Grossi.

“It would have been unbelievable if it weren’t about Iran. Now they’re openly threatening the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A mafia state!” Sa’ar wrote on X.

The foreign minister was referencing an earlier tweet posted by Ali Larijani, a former brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, chief nuclear negotiator and speaker of the Iranian parliament.

“When the war is over, we will settle accounts with Grossi,” Larijani wrote in Farsi.

On June 12, a day before Israel launched its preemptive attack against Iran, the IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors for the first time in nearly two decades declared Iran to be in violation of its non-proliferation commitments, paving the way for a possible referral to the U.N. Security Council.

This move followed a series of long-standing disputes between Iran and the IAEA, which intensified after the United States, under President Donald Trump, withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran and other world powers in 2018.

On June 12, 19 countries voted in favor of the IAEA resolution in a closed-door session. Eleven abstained, and three—Russia, China and Burkina Faso—opposed the resolution. It was introduced by the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

On May 31, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that “Iran is totally determined to complete its nuclear weapons program,” referring to the IAEA report that was eventually presented to its Board of Governors.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog “presents a stark picture that serves as a clear warning sign,” the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

The report “strongly reinforces what Israel has been saying for years—the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement continued.

Israel has already dealt significant blows to the Iranian nuclear program in its kinetic war with the Islamic Republic over the past week, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in an interview published on Friday.

Iran’s capability to obtain a nuclear weapon has been delayed “by at least two or three years,” Sa’ar said.

Without going into detail about the IDF’s capacity to destroy all of Tehran’s nuclear facilities, including the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant located deep underground some 20 miles north of Qom, Sa’ar vowed that Israel will “not stop until we have done everything that is possible to eliminate this threat.”