Iran boosts uranium stockpile at weapons-grade threat levels

UN atomic agency voices ‘serious concern’ at Tehran’s activities

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, visiting a defence exhibition in Tehran last month. His regime denies it is developing a nuclear weapon. Reuters

Iran has boosted its stockpile of near-weapons grade uranium by more than half in the space of three months, a UN agency revealed on Monday.

Tehran's growing stocks of 60 per cent-enriched uranium make it "the only non-nuclear weapon state enriching to this level", said Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear fuel enriched to that level is considered a short step away from the 90 per cent needed for atomic weapons.

Mr Grossi told the IAEA's board of governors that the stockpile had grown from 182kg to 275kg in the previous quarter. He expressed "serious concern" at Iran's activities as it obstructs inspections and evades the agency's demands to account for a set of undeclared nuclear traces.

He said he "deeply regrets" that Tehran had backed off from working with four experienced IAEA inspectors, having indicated it might be willing to do so. Without the information it seeks, the agency cannot "provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful", Mr Grossi said. Iran denies it has any intent to develop a nuclear weapon.

"The amount of enriched uranium at 60 per cent is growing very, very fast," Mr Grossi told reporters in Vienna after briefing the board of governors. "All the strengthening of their capacities is under way and we are seeing that at different facilities.

"There are doubts, there are concerns, so we are, all the time, offering Iran ways to set the record straight if they believe there is an unjustified doubt," he said. "In the current context of international tension, we really need to put this on the right track."

Iran has now been flouting the terms of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers for four years, Mr Grossi said. The US withdrew from the deal during Donald Trump's first term as president and restored sanctions that had been lifted in exchange for limits on Iranian nuclear activities.

After returning to the White House, Mr Trump restored a "maximum pressure" policy on Iran, vowing that the US "will not tolerate" the country developing nuclear weapons. The party that won Germany's general election last month also describes the nuclear deal as having "failed", although some in Europe are still interested in negotiations.

Mr Grossi said the IAEA was ready to play a role in any diplomatic process that does emerge. He said he was in "constant contact" with Iranian diplomats and a further visit to Tehran was a possibility.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office after the death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, had appointed former nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif as his Vice President for Strategic Affairs in a possible indication that Tehran is willing to strike a deal. But Mr Zarif announced his resignation on Monday in a further blow to reformists.

Mr Grossi told the IAEA board he had "requested co-operation" with the new regime in Syria after the fall of Bashar Al Assad. The agency has outstanding questions about a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed in an air raid by Israel in 2007.