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Adolfo Saracho, a senior diplomat and arms expert, soon created the Department for Nuclear Affairs and Disarmament in the Argentinean Foreign Ministry. “Saracho was a kind of Pied Piper, who was surrounded by young, smart, passionate kids he mentored,” Poneman, a nuclear-security expert who was in Buenos Aires at the time, recalled. Grossi was “a wet-behind-the-ears, newly minted diplomat” in Saracho’s orbit, Poneman said. “Rafa always had a kind of vision, even for a kid at that point, in his tender years, with a lively intellect, already charismatic, and with genuine gravitas. He stood out.”
Grossi has now spent four decades on the issues outlined in Eisenhower’s speech. In 2023, he addressed the U.N. General Assembly from the same dais where Eisenhower had spoken. “Atoms for Peace is more relevant than ever,” he said. “Every day on every continent, the I.A.E.A. supports nations in overcoming challenges like disease, poverty, hunger, pollution, and climate change by seizing opportunities to improve health care, agriculture, and energy systems through the power of nuclear science and technology.”
This year, Grossi persuaded the World Bank to end its decades-long ban on funding nuclear-energy projects; the agreement was signed in June, opening the way for the bank to support initiatives in developing countries. Grossi also created the Rays of Hope program, to expand global access to cancer detection and care. As a medical treatment, radiation had saved millions of lives “by turning cancers that were death sentences into curable diseases,” he said, in a speech in Ethiopia launching the initiative. “But these lifesaving advances have passed half the world by.”
Still, Grossi has generated more headlines in his role as the watchdog checking for cheaters—as Argentina once was. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., which went into effect in 1970, authorizes Grossi’s agency to monitor the nuclear facilities in all countries that have signed it; the I.A.E.A. can deploy cameras, conduct on-site inspections, and investigate suspicious activity. (The treaty currently has a hundred and ninety-one signatories.)
Iran was one of the original signatories. It is now the I.A.E.A.’s crisis case. A year ago, Grossi visited Fordo, the most advanced nuclear facility in the country. It was “very unassuming,” he told me. “Think about it as an underground parking garage. The difference is, instead of cars, it had labs and centrifuge halls and research-and-development places. It is a major piece of architecture.” Trucks could transport personnel and equipment into the complex; Grossi’s team opted to walk down a circular ramp almost three hundred feet underground. The facility is at the edge of the Alborz Mountains, a range considered in ancient times to be the home of mythical gods and an entrance to the afterlife. In the twenty-first century, it has hidden the centerpiece of Iran’s contentious nuclear program.
In June, the I.A.E.A. board of governors declared for the first time in two decades that Iran had violated the safeguard provisions outlined in the N.P.T. It cited the Islamic Republic for “many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019” on nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran. I.A.E.A. declarations are based on reports prepared by Grossi. “That report did not say anything that we had not said before,” Grossi told me. “Of course, it was stern and serious about Iran’s lack of answers and coöperation on many fronts. At the same time, I said in black-and-white that there was no systematic nuclear-weapons program in Iran.” (The board includes representatives from the first five nuclear powers and thirty other rotating members. Nineteen countries supported the Iran resolution, eleven abstained, two declined to vote, and three—China, Russia, and Burkina Faso—opposed it.)
Shortly after the I.A.E.A. resolution, Israel bombed military, nuclear, and political headquarters across Iran, including Fordo’s surface facilities and access roads. U.S. B-2 stealth warplanes later dropped a dozen bunker-busting bombs, each weighing thirty thousand pounds, directly into Fordo. Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, blamed Grossi personally for what would later be dubbed the Twelve-Day War; he vowed that Iran would “settle” with the I.A.E.A. director-general after it ended. Kayhan, a hard-line newspaper considered the mouthpiece of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Grossi, who is Catholic, a Mossad agent. It warned that he would be tried and executed if he returned to Iran. There have since been more graphic threats.
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Robin Wright
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