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IAEA: Tehran Not Fulfilling Nuclear Commitments

International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Wednesday. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Wednesday. (Reuters)
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IAEA: Tehran Not Fulfilling Nuclear Commitments

International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Wednesday. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Wednesday. (Reuters)

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Thursday that Iran is not fulfilling many aspects of its nuclear commitments.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi told Iran International that "Iran has ceased to implement lots of aspects and nuclear-related obligations under the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).”
“We once again call on Iran to halt all production of uranium enriched to 60 percent. No other non-nuclear weapons states party to the NPT enriches to 60 percent because there is no reasonable peaceful application for such material,” US Ambassador Laura Holgate said.
“As reported by the Director General, establishing a new verification baseline for these activities would pose major challenges. We urge Iran to cooperate fully with the Agency in providing all relevant data and look forward to further reporting from the Director General on these issues.”
The three European countries - members of the JCPOA - stressed that Iran should abstain from intensifying its nuclear program.
Presenting his latest report, Grossi said: “You will note that Iran’s stockpiles of uranium enriched up to 5%, enriched up to 20%, and enriched up to 60% – high enriched uranium – have all increased since we met in September with the increase of the 60% continuing at the same rate as I reported at the time of the last Board."
Iran has enough uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, close to weapons-grade, for three atom bombs by the IAEA's definition and is still stonewalling the agency on key issues, confidential IAEA reports showed on Wednesday.
Iran's stock of uranium enriched to up to 60% grew to 128.3 kg since the last report on Sept. 4, one of the two reports to member states seen by Reuters said. That is more than three times the roughly 42 kg that by the IAEA's definition is theoretically enough, if enriched further, for a nuclear bomb.
"The (IAEA) Director General (Grossi) continues to strongly condemn Iran's sudden withdrawal of the designations of several experienced Agency inspectors," it added.
On Sep.17, Iran revoked the license of eight inspectors of the IAEA in Iran with French and German nationalities.
Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said that this decision was taken because the inspectors were politicizing the matter.

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting - as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder in 1972 of the National Front, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: his multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and condoning war crimes dogged the National Front, according to Reuters.
His declaration that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history and that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane" were for many people repulsive.
"If you take a book of a thousand pages on World War Two, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail," Le Pen said in the late 1990s, doubling down on earlier remarks.
Those comments provoked outrage, including in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Commenting on Le Pen's death, President Emmanuel Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."
Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.
He reached a presidential election run-off in 2002 but lost by a landslide to Jacques Chirac. Voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment felt by many Britons who later voted to leave the EU.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Born in Brittany in 1928, Jean-Marie Le Pen studied law in Paris in the early 1950s and had a reputation for rarely spending a night out on the town without a brawl. He joined the Foreign Legion as a paratrooper fighting in Indochina in 1953.
Le Pen campaigned to keep Algeria French, as an elected member of France's parliament and a soldier in the then French-run territory. He publicly justified the use of torture but denied using such practices himself.
After years on the periphery of French politics, his fortunes changed in 1977 when a millionaire backer bequeathed him a mansion outside Paris and 30 million francs, around 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in today's money.
The helped Le Pen further his political ambitions, despite being shunned by traditional parties.
"Lots of enemies, few friends and honor aplenty," he told a website linked to the far-right. He wrote in his memoir: "No regrets."
In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.
She has reached - and lost - two presidential election run-offs. Opinion polls make her the frontrunner in the next presidential election, due in 2027.
The rebranding did not sit well with her father, whose inflammatory statements and sniping forced her to expel him from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen described as a "betrayal" his daughter's decision to change the party's name in 2018 to National Rally, and said she should marry to lose her family name.
Their relationship remained difficult but he had warm words for her when Macron defeated her in 2022: "She did all she could, she did very well."