Iran inches toward nuclear weapons capability, IAEA chief warns

Iran has enough enriched uranium to produce several nuclear warheads and could do so within months, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Iran is not far from having a nuclear problem. They don’t have it, we know it,” Grossi said. “But the material for it already, it’s already there. To make a few warheads.”

He added that Iran had previously “conducted research and even testing some of the necessary elements for (a) nuclear device,” and that the IAEA lacks “full confidence that they have disappeared completely.”

While stressing the technical distinction between capability and possession, Grossi warned that the timeline is narrowing: “It would be a matter of months, not years."

The IAEA continues inspections in Iran, but Grossi described the current level of access as falling short. “I would say insufficient ... degree of visibility as we see it necessary.”

Talks between the US and Iran are ongoing, with Grossi calling the moment “fraught with opportunity, but of course pretty sensitive, if not dangerous.”

He referred to the unprecedented nature of the engagement, saying, “We see Iran and the United States talking directly in a way that had never happened before.”

Grossi said the IAEA lacks adequate visibility and called the current US-Iran talks “a moment of huge, huge, huge responsibility for everybody.”

Key technical issues, including uranium enrichment and potential weaponization, are central to the discussions. “It is obvious ... that the enrichment chapter is a very big chapter...and the weaponization chapter is another very important part of that conversation,” said the IAEA chief.

Grossi said China had expressed clear opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran during his recent meetings in Beijing, which he called, "a very firm commitment ... that we should not have an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.”

He concluded that verifying any future agreement would remain the IAEA’s domain. “We are the ones that are able—the only ones that are able—to say Iran has so much of this, so much of that.”

Grossi visited Tehran last week and held talks with senior Iranian officials ahead of the second round of US-Iran diplomacy in Rome.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if the negotiations fail.