Iran Rebuffs U.N. Watchdog on Resuming Nuclear Inspections

The head of the U.N. nuclear agency said Tehran continues to refuse to let it replace key monitoring equipment that tracks the country’s nuclear program.

NY Times-Nov. 24, 2021, 10:35 a.m. ET

By Steven Erlanger

BRUSSELS — In what could be an ill omen for the resumption of talks next week on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday that he had failed to convince Iran to replace key equipment needed to monitor its nuclear program.

The agency is charged by the United Nations with monitoring nuclear activity among member states. Its inspectors and cameras have been the prime source of information about Iran’s atomic program, which many in the West believe is coming ever closer to having the know-how and material to fashion a nuclear weapon, despite Iran’s repeated insistence of peaceful intent.

The agency’s director-general, Rafael M. Grossi, told a quarterly meeting of its board of governors in Geneva that two days of talks in Tehran had not produced an agreement to reinstall surveillance cameras at a centrifuge-parts workshop in Karaj, Iran. The workshop was the target of apparent sabotage in June, an attack that Iran blames on Israel.