Laurence Norman
WSJ, Apr. 19, 2025
“The critical gap in IAEA knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program is Iran’s inventory of centrifuges, machines that spin uranium into higher levels of enrichment.”
President Trump is calling for Iran to “go fast” to secure a new nuclear accord. But for any deal to work, Tehran will have to account for exactly what nuclear program hardware it has produced and stowed away.
There are critical gaps in the world’s understanding of Iran’s nuclear inventory. Tehran in recent years has restricted United Nations atomic agency oversight of its nuclear activities—a key requirement under the 2015 accord, and stifled an agency probe into undeclared nuclear material found in the country. At various points, it has removed cameras intended to monitor key parts of its nuclear infrastructure and effectively banned inspectors from those sites.
As a result, the International Atomic Energy Agency has since September 2023 said that it no longer has fully updated information about a range of Iran’s nuclear work and can’t confirm Tehran’s claim that its program is purely for peaceful purposes. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has said the Trump administration’s red line is to prevent Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
U.S. intelligence officials said last month they don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build a nuclear weapon but U.S. officials think it would only take a few months for Tehran to build one.
Iran has stopped the agency from inspecting nonnuclear sites since 2021, curtailing the IAEA’s insight into Iran’s ability to build a bomb. But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said this week the Iranians “aren’t far away” from being able to do it….SOURCE