Vienna — Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report on Monday by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the latest in Tehran’s attempts to steadily exert pressure on the international community.
Iran is seeking to have economic sanctions imposed over the country’s controversial nuclear program lifted in exchange for slowing the program down. The program – as all matters of state in Iran – are under the guidance of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and that likely won’t change in the wake of last week’s helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president and foreign minister.
The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency also comes against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the wider Middle East over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Israel and Iran have carried out direct strikes on each other’s territory for the first time last month.
The report, seen by several news agencies, said that as of May 11, Iran has 142.1 kilograms (313.2 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% – an increase of 20.6 kilograms (45.4 pounds) since the last report by the U.N. watchdog in February. Uranium enriched at 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
By IAEA’s definition, around 42 kilograms (92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible – if the material is enriched further, to 90%.
Also as of May 11, the report says Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium stands at 6,201.3 kilograms (1,3671.5 pounds), which represents an increase of 675.8 kilograms (1,489.8 pounds) since the IAEA’s previous report.
Iran has maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, but the IAEA chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has previously warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so. He has acknowledged the U.N. agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment.
Iran’s continuing lack of transparency on its nuclear program
Tensions have grown between Iran and the IAEA since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Since then, Iran has abandoned all limits the deal put on its program and quickly stepped up enrichment.
Under the original nuclear deal, struck in 2015, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% purity, maintain a stockpile of about 300 kilograms and use only very basic IR-1 centrifuges – machines that spin uranium gas at high speed for enrichment purposes.
The 2015 deal saw Tehran agree to limit enrichment of uranium to levels necessary for generating nuclear power in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. At the time, U.N. inspectors were tasked with monitoring the program.
Monday’s report also said Tehran hasn’t reconsidered its September 2023 decision to bar IAEA inspectors from further monitoring its nuclear program and added that it expects Iran “to do so in the context of the ongoing consultations between the (IAEA) agency and Iran.”
According to the report, Grossi “deeply regrets” Iran’s decision to bar inspectors – and a reversal of that decision “remains essential to fully allow the agency to conduct its verification activities in Iran effectively.”
The deaths of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian have triggered a pause in the IAEA’s talks with Tehran over improving cooperation, the report acknowledged.
Before the May 19 helicopter crash, Iran had agreed to hold technical negotiations with IAEA on May 20, following a visit by Grossi earlier in the month. But those meetings fell apart due to the crash. Iran then sent a letter on May 21 saying its nuclear team wants to continue discussions in Tehran “on an appropriate date that will be mutually agreed upon,” the report said.
The head of Iran’s atomic energy department, Mohammad Eslami, waves to media at the conclusion of his joint press conference with International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, also seen here, after their meeting in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, on May 7, 2024.
Vahid Salemi / AP
The report also said Iran still hasn’t provided answers to the IAEA’s years-long investigation about the origin and current location of manmade uranium particles found at two locations that Tehran has failed to declare as potential nuclear sites, Varamin and Turquzabad.
It said the IAEA’s request needs to be resolved, or the the agency “will not be able to confirm the correctness an completeness of Iran’s declarations” under a safeguards agreement between Tehran and the nuclear watchdog.
The report also said there was no progress so far in reinstalling more monitoring equipment, including cameras, removed in June 2022. Since then, the only recorded data is that of IAEA cameras installed at a centrifuge workshop in the city of Isfahan in May 2023 – although Iran hasn’t provided the IAEA with access to this data.
The IAEA said that on May 21, IAEA inspectors, after a delay in April, “successfully serviced the cameras at the workshops in Isfahan and the data they had collected since late December 2023 were placed under separate Agency seals and Iranians seals at the locations.”
For more than five years – 1,975 days – American businessman Emad Shargi was a prisoner of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He spent much of that time in the country’s most notorious prison, in a dreaded ward run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Last month, Shargi and four other Americans were freed in a complicated deal involving $6 billion in restricted Iranian oil revenue. The deal drew criticism at the time for granting financial relief to a regime the U.S. government considers the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. It drew even more scrutiny after Hamas, which is financially supported by Iran, attacked Israel two weeks ago. With more than 200 hostages remaining in Gaza, including some Americans, Shargi’s ordeal is a stark illustration of the difficulties and perils involved in bringing American citizens home.
Emad Shargi: This story– should’ve never happened. But I didn’t waste five and a half years, Margaret. I learned a lot about myself, about humanity, about what is important in life. Being thrown in a cell, it’s the closest you come to death.
Emad Shargi is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Iran. He left Iran at age 13, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In the U.S. he went to college, met his wife Bahareh, and started a business representing U.S. chemical companies in the Middle East….and later worked for a private equity firm in Abu Dhabi. By 2016, with their daughters off to college, Emad and Bahareh, who is also Iranian-American, decided to travel to Iran and rediscover their roots…
Iran had just agreed to a landmark deal to limit its nuclear development in exchange for sanctions relief, which made Shargi think the country was full of opportunity. His father thought otherwise.
Emad Shargi with his wife, Bahareh
60 Minutes
Emad Shargi: He said to me, he said, “Emad, you don’t know this country. People like you with dual nationalities, they pick these people up once in a while for whatever use they have for them.” And I said, “Dad, give me a break, you know. I’ve never been in the U.S. government. Nothing.” And I guess if anybody asks me, “In one sentence, what have you learned from this experience,” I would say, “Listen to your dad.”
The couple, both in their 50s, began spending time in Iran. Shargi found work consulting for an Amsterdam-based company investing in Iranian businesses.
Margaret Brennan: Was there anything that suggested to you that you were a target, that there was going to be a problem?
Emad Shargi: You know, I thought, “I have a better chance of getting hit crossing the road by a motorbike,” when I was there. I did not see this coming.
Just past midnight, on April 23, 2018, about 15 armed agents showed up at the family house in Tehran.
Emad Shargi: Gentleman walked in he said, “This is an arrest warrant for you and for your wife.”
Margaret Brennan: On what grounds?
Emad Shargi: He wouldn’t tell me at the time. Around 2:30 in the morning they said, “OK. Get ready. We are taking you.” And my wife said, “No, you can’t take him,” and they told her to sit down and mind her business, that they’ll get to her later.
Margaret Brennan: What did that mean?
Emad Shargi: I did not know at the time. So when they took me out of that house I did not know what was going to happen to my wife.
Margaret Brennan: That’s terrifying.
Emad Shargi: Yep. It’s not a position you want to be in.
Margaret Brennan and Emad Shargi
60 Minutes
He was taken to a place in Tehran Iranians have long feared – Evin Prison…to a special ward known as 2A, run by the intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Emad Shargi: They took me to a room. They told me to strip naked. They gave me some blue garbs. They told me, “This is the end of the line for you, and most likely you’ll never see the outside world.” “From now on nobody will address you by your name. You are a code now,” 97-0-10 was my code.
Margaret Brennan: That’s dehumanizing.
Emad Shargi: Ah, they were experts at that. And then hell starts.
Margaret Brennan: Torture.
Emad Shargi: Threats of torture and psychological torture. They take you to a very small room. And then they throw a giant of a human being in there, who proceeds to hit you, to push you around, to threaten to kill you. And then the good cop comes in, and he says, “Look, I can put a stop to this. You just need to confess.”
Margaret Brennan: Confess to what?
Emad Shargi: They said, “You have to confess that you are a spy,” which is ludicrous.
Shargi says his interrogators threatened him with electrical shocks, water-boarding, and hanging, but never followed through.
Emad Shargi: So I realized they don’t want to damage their product at that point.
Margaret Brennan: Product.
Emad Shargi: Correct.
Margaret Brennan: Why do you choose that word?
Emad Shargi: Because that’s what I was.
Margaret Brennan: You believe you were taken simply because you were American to extract a price.
Emad Shargi: Correct.
He told us some interrogations went on for nine hours a day.
Margaret Brennan: What did you tell them during all those hours of questioning?
Emad Shargi: I mean, the most mundane things. The first day they kept asking me, “Why did you go to the White House church?” And I’m just thinking to myself, going, “I know the White House doesn’t have a church.” And then it clicked. They had hacked my Facebook. They had seen the pictures of us attending my daughter’s events at school at the National Cathedral. They had no idea the National Cathedral had nothing to do wa– with the White House.
Margaret Brennan: This is an intelligence service.
Emad Shargi: You would be surprised. They had my telephone so they had gone through the list of every person I’d ever met during the last 30 years of my business career. “Who are these? Who are those?” These questions would go on day after day after day.
In December 2018, after eight months of interrogation, Emad Shargi was suddenly released on bail. His wife Bahareh, who’d never been arrested, was able to leave the country. Emad expected to join her soon; he says he received a letter of exoneration. But he wasn’t allowed to leave Iran.
Emad Shargi: Now my story takes a bizarre turn. My file had been sent to the Revolutionary Court. It’s where a gentleman by the name of Judge Salavati sits, also known as the hanging judge.
In November 2020, the hanging judge sentenced Shargi to 10 years in prison under a broadly-worded statute which prohibits cooperating “by any means” with foreign states against Iran. Before Shargi had to report back to prison, a friend came up with a plan.
Margaret Brennan: To escape.
Emad Shargi: To escape. And I said, “Let’s go.”
Smugglers helped him make his way to Iran’s mountainous border with Kurdistan. But about 30 miles from freedom…
Emad Shargi: I look up. And there is about 15 guys with AK-47 pointing at the car.. They threw me on the ground. And their team leader came. He opened the scarf that I– they had put around my eyes. And he looked away and he shook his head to his team members.
Margaret Brennan: They were looking for somebody else–
Emad Shargi: They were looking for somebody. But now we have round two of incarceration
This Iranian propaganda photo taken in January 2021 shows him bearded and shackled, being escorted back to ward 2a…where he says he underwent another eight months of interrogation.
Emad Shargi: This second eight months, I was interrogated close to 400 hours.
Margaret Brennan: How do you stay sane?
Emad Shargi
60 Minutes
Emad Shargi: All of those times, there was never a doubt in my mind that my government would get me out. That was my hope.
….and sought help from the State Department, which reviewed Shargi’s case and determined he was wrongfully detained.
The Biden administration had been trying to broker both the release of American detainees and the renewal of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which the Trump administration had pulled out of.
But the talks stalled.
In the fall of 2022, widespread protests broke out following the death of a young woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
In Evin Prison, the inmates rioted and set fires…the guards responded with tear gas and bullets.
Emad Shargi: It was happening a couple of yards from where I was sitting in– in my room. Now, if I left, I could be shot. If I stayed, I could suffocate.
With no good option, he stayed in his cell. Shargi says he was rescued, ironically, by his tormentors – a team of Revolutionary guards.
Emad Shargi: They were pale white when they saw me. They were like, “Emad, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Margaret Brennan: Because you’re worth more alive than you are dead.
Emad Shargi: Correct
Shortly after the fire, Emad’s sister Neda sought a meeting with Iran’s top diplomat at the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani. She wanted to learn what was holding up a prisoner deal.
Neda Sharghi, Emad’s sister
60 Minutes
Margaret Brennan: He acknowledged to you that there are people inside his own government that didn’t want the deal to happen.
Neda Sharghi: Yeah. I mean, he acknowledged that. Just as there are people in our government who didn’t want this to happen. You know, we’re dealing with innocent human lives, and we want to rectify the situation. But for other people, it’s politics and it’s power. And they get in the way.
Arranging a meeting with President Biden proved more difficult for Neda. Determined to help her brother, she went to this crowded White House reception for the Persian New Year, and managed to button-hole the president after he spoke….
Neda Sharghi: I told him they are American citizens who are innocent and need to come home as soon as possible, because time is not on our side.
After roughly two years of start and stop negotiations, the U.S. and Iran reached a complex agreement.
Six billion dollars that Iran had earned from selling its oil had been tied up in a foreign account for years due to U.S. sanctions. According to U.S. officials, Iran can use the money to buy humanitarian goods like food and medicine once the U.S. approves the transactions. The money goes to the suppliers, not the government of Iran.
On September 18th, President Biden granted clemency to five Iranians accused of non-violent crimes. Five Americans, including Emad Shargi, were released and flown to Qatar.
From there, they flew to a military base in Virginia…. where their families were waiting…
Emad Shargi with his family
60 Minutes
Emad Shargi: I hadn’t seen my daughters for five and a half, six years. I had missed all their graduations, birthdays, anniversaries with my wife. It’s like being born again. We had thought we were going to be freed so many times, and this was it.
Since his release, Emad’s making up for lost time with his family…he’s also had time to reflect.
Emad Shargi: You think to yourself, “What was this all about?” “Why did– did they do this to me and to my family?”
Margaret Brennan: For five years.
Emad Shargi: And the short answer is– hostage-taking as statecraft
Margaret Brennan: If you are an American–
Emad Shargi: Yes.
Margaret Brennan: An Iranian American–
Emad Shargi: No. Iranian American, Italian American, American, do not go to Iran.
Less than three weeks after Shargi’s release, Hamas – which is financially backed by Iran – attacked Israel. As Israel counter-attacked in Gaza, some U.S. lawmakers have called for blocking Iran’s access to the $6 billion. The White House insists no money has been released so far and sources told us the arrangement has not changed.
Margaret Brennan: When you watch the news right now and you see what has happened in Israel– not just about the people killed, but the hostages that have been taken, what is that like for you?
Emad Shargi: I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have your daughter, your son, your wife, your father being taken hostage. And I cannot believe what’s the families are going through. I just wish them a safe return home.
Produced by Andy Court. Associate producer, Annabelle Hanflig. Broadcast associates, Eliza Costas and Sophia Barkoff. Edited by Warren Lustig.
Iran claimed on Wednesday it successfully launched an imaging satellite into space, which could further ratchet up tensions with Western nations that fear its space technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran’s Communication Minister Isa Zarepour said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth’s surface, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. It was not clear when exactly the launch took place.
There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This frame grab taken from a video broadcast by Iranian television on Sept. 27, 2023 shows what Iran’s Communications Minister Isa Zarepour described as a Noor-3 satellite launched on a rocket from an undisclosed location in Iran.
IRIB via AP
Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years. The most recent launch was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has had more success. Gen. Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Guard, told state TV the launch was a “victory” and that the satellite will collect data and images.
The Guard operates its own space program and military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces and answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It launched its first satellite into space in April 2020. But the head of the U.S. Space Command later dismissed it as a “tumbling webcam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence. Western sanctions bar Iran from importing advanced spying technology.
Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket.
United Nations — “No progress.” That’s the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency’s latest assessment of international efforts to monitor and verify Iran’s nuclear program.
The global body’s work, stemming from the now-defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), related to “verification and monitoring has been seriously affected by Iran’s decision to stop implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA” one of the two reports dated September 4 said.
The still-unpublished quarterly reports, obtained by CBS News, on Iran’s nuclear advancement said the “situation was exacerbated by Iran’s subsequent decision to remove all of the Agency’s JCPOA-related surveillance and monitoring equipment.”
The IAEA’s talks with Iran on reinstalling surveillance cameras in the country’s nuclear facilities and answering questions about traces of uranium found at some of the sites previously have not produced results, leading Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi to report to the agency’s Board of Governors that he “regrets that there has been no progress.”
The updates on Iran will be presented at a news conference on the first day of the next 35-nation IAEA board meeting on September 11, agency spokesman Fredrik Dahl told CBS News Monday — about a week before Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is due to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 19.
In an agreement reached six months ago between Grossi and Iranian officials, Iran agreed “on a voluntary basis” to “implement further appropriate verification and monitoring,” but the IAEA’s subsequent May report said it had “not had access to the data and recordings collected by its surveillance equipment being used to monitor centrifuges and associated infrastructure in storage, and since 10 June 2022, when this equipment was removed, no such monitoring has taken place.”
The IAEA did report some limited progress in monitoring in May, but not as required under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which effectively fell apart, despite efforts by European leaders to salvage it, after then-President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. unilaterally out of the agreement in 2018.
According to the IAEA, Iran’s enrichment of uranium up to 60% purity has continued, thought it slowed from almost 20 kilograms per month to about 6.5 over the period since the last report was issued in May. Some Western diplomats see that as a small concession by Iran, as inspectors said Iran’s stockpile of highly-enriched uranium grew by 7% over the last quarter compared to 30% during the previous one.
The U.S. and some of its allies have long believed that Iran is trying to cover up clandestine work toward a nuclear weapons program, though the Islamic republic has always denied that. While 60% enriched uranium is not considered weapons-grade, it is a relatively short technical step away from the level of purity required for nuclear weapons.
This file photo released November 5, 2019 by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP
“As a technical matter, a slowdown of 60% won’t do a much to dispel non-proliferation concerns,” Dr. Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project and senior adviser to the President of The Crisis Group thinktank told CBS News on Monday. “Iran still has sufficient fissile material for multiple weapons if enriched to weapons-grade. Breakout time [to hypothetically launch a weapons program] remains close to nil. IAEA access remains limited, and safeguard questions remain outstanding.”
Vaez added, however, that the slow-down in the high-enrichment program by Iran could still hold some meaning.
“As a diplomatic signal, it would be the first real indication of some degree of deceleration on Tehran’s part after several years of continued expansion,” he told CBS News.
The two latest IAEA reports will be published at a difficult time for U.S. negotiators, who have been working to negotiate a prisoner swap and on discussions about the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets ringfenced by the U.S. government. It also comes on the heels of top U.S. negotiator Rob Malley leaving his role.
Western powers argue that, regardless of any incremental slowdown in high-enriched uranium production, Iran is getting too close for comfort to the theoretical ability to produce nuclear weapons. Iran’s existing stockpile of uranium, if further enriched to weapons-grade, would be sufficient to produce two nuclear bombs, according to the IAEA’s previous report from May.
In unusually stern language, the new IAEA reports say Iran’s decision to remove all of the agency’s monitoring equipment “has had detrimental implications for the Agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
FILE: Robert Malley, Biden administration special envoy for Iran, waits to testify about the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations on Capitol Hill May 25, 2022, in Washington, DC.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Washington — Rob Malley, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, has been on leave while his security clearance is under review.
“I have been informed that my security clearance is under review. I have not been provided any further information, but I expect the investigation to be resolved favorably and soon,” Malley said in a statement to CBS News. “In the meantime, I am on leave.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that Malley was on leave and told reporters Thursday, “Abram Paley is serving as acting special envoy for Iran and leading the department’s work in this area.”
In President Barack Obama’s administration, Malley had a hand in everything from the Iran nuclear deal negotiations to the fight against the Islamic State. Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran curtailed its nuclear program in order to receive sanctions relief. After President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal, Malley has played a central role in trying to revive it under President Joe Biden.
Malley’s absence coincides with multiple reports in recent weeks that the U.S. has restarted indirect talks with Iran on the nuclear and detainee issue. National Security Council Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk has also recently played a role.
This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations there was “no agreement in the offing” and any reports of a deal being reached were misleading.
Malley has also been involved in negotiations to secure the release of Americans who the U.S. says are wrongfully detained in Iran.
The head of the U.N.’s nuclear agency said Saturday that Iran pledged to restore cameras and other monitoring equipment at its nuclear sites and to allow more inspections at a facility where particles of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade were recently detected.
But a joint statement issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran’s nuclear body only gave vague assurances that Tehran would address longstanding complaints about the access it gives the watchdog’s inspectors to its disputed nuclear program.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other top officials in Tehran earlier Saturday.
Director general of International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, minister of foreign affairs of Iran, meet in Tehran, Iran, on March 4, 2023.
Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“Over the past few months, there was a reduction in some of the monitoring activities” related to cameras and other equipment “which were not operating,” Grossi told reporters upon his return to Vienna. “We have agreed that those will be operating again.”
He did not provide details about which equipment would be restored or how soon it would happen, but appeared to be referring to Iran’s removal of surveillance cameras from its nuclear sites in June 2022, during an earlier standoff with the IAEA.
“These are not words. This is very concrete,” Grossi said of the assurances he received in Tehran.
His first visit to Iran in a year came days after the IAEA reported that uranium particles enriched up to 83.7% — just short of weapons-grade — were found in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site.
The confidential quarterly report by the nuclear watchdog, which was distributed to member nations Tuesday, came as tensions were already high amid months of anti-government protests in Iran, and Western anger at its export of attack drones to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
The IAEA report said inspectors in January found that two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges at Fordo were configured in a way “substantially different” to what Iran had previously declared. That raised concerns that Iran was speeding up its enrichment.
Grossi said the Iranians had agreed to boost inspections at the facility by 50%. He also confirmed the agency’s findings that there has not been any “production or accumulation” of uranium at the higher enrichment level, “which is a very high level.”
Iran has sought to portray any highly enriched uranium particles as a minor byproduct of enriching uranium to 60% purity, which it has been doing openly for some time.
The chief of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohammad Eslami, acknowledged the findings of the IAEA report at a news conference with Grossi in Tehran, but said their “ambiguity” had been resolved.
Nonproliferation experts say Tehran has no civilian use for uranium enriched to even 60%. A stockpile of material enriched to 90%, the level needed for weapons, could quickly be used to produce an atomic bomb, if Iran chooses.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers limited Tehran’s uranium stockpile and capped enrichment at 3.67% — enough to fuel a nuclear power plant. It also barred nuclear enrichment at Fordo, which was built deep inside a mountain in order to withstand aerial attacks.
The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018, reimposing crushing sanctions on Iran, which then began openly breaching the deal’s restrictions. Efforts by the Biden administration, European countries and Iran to negotiate a return to the deal reached an impasse last summer.
The joint statement issued Saturday said Iran “expressed its readiness to continue its cooperation and provide further information and access to address the outstanding safeguards issues.”
That was a reference to a separate set of issues from the highly enriched particles.
Over the past four years, the IAEA has accused Iran of stonewalling its investigation into traces of processed uranium found at three undeclared sites in the country. The agency’s 35-member board of governors censured Iran twice last year for failing to fully cooperate.
The board could do so again when it meets on Monday, depending in part on how Western officials perceive the results of Grossi’s visit.
The war in Ukraine could last “three to five years,” according to Matthew Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Government. He joined CBS News to discuss this year’s many foreign policy developments.
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The Biden administration is accusing Russia of moving to provide advanced military assistance to Iran, including air defense systems, helicopters and fighter jets, part of deepening cooperation between the two nations as Tehran provides drones to support Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday cited U.S. intelligence assessments for the allegations, saying Russia was offering Iran “an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship into a full-fledged defense partnership.”
Kirby said Russia and Iran were considering standing up a drone assembly line in Russia for the Ukraine conflict, while Russia was training Iranian pilots on the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter and Iran could receive deliveries of the plane within the year.
“These fighter planes will significantly strengthen Iran’s air force relative to its regional neighbors,” Kirby said.
The U.S. allegations are part of a deliberate effort by the U.S. to drive global isolation of Russia, in this case targeted at Arab nations who have looked to contain Iran’s regional malevolence and who have not taken a strong stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As Russia’s military resources are being taxed by the Ukraine invasion and sanctions against it because of the war, Western powers are providing military equipment to Ukraine to defend itself, upping the cost to Putin, reminiscent of the draining of resources which occurred during the “Star Wars” competition between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, when Moscow saw its military coffers depleted.
A Sukhoi Su-35 military fighter jet at the International Military-Technical Forum at Kubinka military training ground in Moscow, Russia, on Aug. 18, 2022.
Pavel Pavlov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Earlier this year, the Biden administration accused Saudi Arabia of siding with Russia in the conflict by shepherding cuts by the OPEC+ cartel to boost the price of oil, crucial to funding Moscow’s war effort. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been on opposite sides of a yearslong proxy war in Yemen.
Kirby said the arms transfers were in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, and that the U.S. would be “using the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities.”
Concerns about the “deepening and a burgeoning defense partnership” between Russia and Iran come as the Biden administration has repeatedly accused Iran of assisting Russia with its invasion of Ukraine.
The administration says Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russian over the summer. Kirby on Friday reiterated the administration’s belief that Iran is considering the sale of hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, but acknowledged that the U.S. doesn’t have “perfect visibility into Iranian thinking on why” the deal hasn’t been consummated.
Russia – because of the biting sanctions – is turning to Iran for weapons, including military drones, that are being using to kill civilians, Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told the U.N. Security Council Friday. Woodward called for a U.N. investigation, arguing that both countries are breaking international law with the rogue partnership.
Woodward accused Russia of attempting to obtain more weapons from Iran, including hundreds of ballistic missiles, in return for “an unprecedented level of military and technical support” to Tehran.
“We are concerned that Russia intends to provide Iran with more advanced military components, which will allow Iran to strengthen their weapons capability,” she said. “So it is imperative that the truth about Iran’s supply to Russia is exposed, and is investigated by the U.N. as soon as possible.”
“Ukraine demands that Iran immediately cease the shipments of weapons to Russia that are used to kill civilians and destroy critical infrastructure, and comply with Security Council resolutions,” Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukrainian ambassador to the U.N., told CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk Friday.
At a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday called by Russia to assess the impact of Western weapons pumped into Ukraine, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia again denied that Iran is supplying weapons to Ukraine.
“The military industrial complecx in Russia can work perfectly fine and doesn’t need anyone’s assistance, whereas the Ukrainian military industry does not basically exist and is being assisted by the Western industry and Western companies,” he said.
At the meeting, Richard Mills, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., told fellow diplomats Friday that “what we are seeing is – frustrated on the battlefield, Russia has resorted to destroying Ukraine’s critical and energy infrastructure from afar, causing immense suffering to civilians as we heard just three days ago, and defying the international community’s call to end its aggression,” Falk reported.
“It is Russia that has cynically called for this meeting, alleging an illicit conspiracy of weapons transfers from Ukraine. When in fact, as others around this table have noted, it is Russia that is complicit in Iran’s illegal transfer of unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia,” Mills added.
The White House says Russia has also turned to North Korea for artillery as the nine-month war grinds on. North Korea has denied the claim.
The White House has repeatedly sought to spotlight Russia’s reliance on Iran and North Korea, another broadly isolated nation on the international stage, for support as it prosecutes its war against Ukraine.
U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called the Iran-Russia collaboration a “desperate alliance.”
“Iran is now one of Russia’s top military backers,” he said. “Their sordid deals have seen the Iranian regime send hundreds of drones to Moscow, which have been used to attack Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and kill civilians.
“In return, Russia is offering military and technical support to the Iranian regime, which will increase the risk it poses to our partners in the Middle East and to international security.”
The Biden administration recently unveiled sanctions against Iranian firms and entities involved in the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. It all comes as the administration has condemned the Islamic republic’s violent squelching of protests that erupted throughout Iran after the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was held by the morality police.
Even as the White House has accused Iran of backing Russia’s war effort, the administration has not abandoned the possibility of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — scuttled by the Trump administration in 2018. The pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, would provide Tehran with billions in sanctions relief in exchange for the country agreeing to roll back its nuclear program to the limits set by the 2015 deal.
CAIRO — Iran on Saturday began construction on a new nuclear power plant in the country’s southwest, Iranian state TV announced, amid tensions with the U.S. over sweeping sanctions imposed after Washington pulled out of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear deal with world powers.
The announcement also comes as Iran has been rocked by nationwide anti-government protests that began after the death of a young woman in police custody and have challenged the country’s theocratic government.
The new 300-megawatt plant, known as Karoon, will take eight years to build and cost around $2 billion, the country’s state television and radio agency reported. The plant will be located in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province, near its western border with Iraq, it said.
The construction site’s inauguration ceremony was attended by Mohammed Eslami, head of Iran’s civilian Atomic Energy Organization, who first unveiled construction plans for Karoon in April.
Iran has one nuclear power plant at its southern port of Bushehr that went online in 2011 with help from Russia, but also several underground nuclear facilities.
The announcement of Karoon’s construction came less than two weeks after Iran said it had begun producing enriched uranium at 60% purity at the country’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. The move is seen as a significant addition to the country’s nuclear program.
Enrichment to 60% purity is one short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Non-proliferation experts have warned in recent months that Iran now has enough 60%-enriched uranium to reprocess into fuel for at least one nuclear bomb.
The move was condemned by Germany, France and Britain, the three Western European nations that remain in the Iran nuclear deal. Recent attempts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, which eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, have stalled.
Since September, Iran has been roiled by nationwide protests that have come to mark one of the greatest challenges to its theocracy since the chaotic years after its 1979 Islamic Revolution. The protests were sparked when Mahsa Amini, 22, died in custody on Sept. 16, three days after her arrest by Iran’s morality police for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women. Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating after she was detained
In a statement issued by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency on Saturday, the country’s national security council announced that some 200 people have been killed during the protests, the body’s first official word on the casualties. Last week, Iranian Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh tallied the death toll at more than 300.
The contradictory tolls are lower than the toll reported by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based organization that has been closely monitoring the protest since the outbreak. In its most recent update, the group says that 469 people have been killed and 18,210 others detained in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed.
Iranian state media also announced Saturday that the family home of Elnaz Rekabi, an Iranian female rock climber who competed abroad with her hair untied, had been demolished. Iran’s official judiciary news agency, Mizan, said the destruction of her brother’s home was due to its ”unauthorized construction and use of land” and that demolition took place months before Rekabi competed. Antigovernment activists say it was a targeted demolition.
Rekabi became a symbol of the antigovernment movement in October after competing in a rock climbing competition in South Korea without wearing a mandatory headscarf required of female athletes from the Islamic Republic. In an Instagram post the following day, Rekabi described her not wearing a hijab as “unintentional,” however it remains unclear whether she wrote the post or what condition she was in at the time.
Separately, the U.S. Navy said Saturday it intercepted a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday attempting to smuggle 50 tons of ammunition and a key component for missiles from Iran to Yemen.
Experts have accused the Iranian government of continually conducting Illicit weapons smuggling operations to supply Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The shipments have included rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles. Last month, the U.S. seized 70 tons of a missile fuel component hidden among fertilizer bags aboard a ship bound for Yemen from Iran.
“This significant interdiction (on Thursday) clearly shows that Iran’s unlawful transfer of lethal aid and destabilizing behavior continues,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet, in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from Iran on the seizure.
Iran has been the Houthis’ major backer since the rebel force swept down from Yemen’s northern mountains in 2014 and seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile. In the following year, a Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence intervened to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power. Since 2014, the United Nations has enforced an arms embargo prohibiting weapons transfers to the Houthis.
The United States unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — in 2018, under then-President Donald Trump. It reimposed sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to start backing away from the deal’s terms. Iran has long denied ever seeking nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear program is peaceful.
Tehran — Iran has begun producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at its Fordo plant, official media reported Tuesday about the underground facility that reopened three years ago amid the breakdown of its nuclear deal with major powers. The move was part of Iran‘s response to the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s adoption last week of a censure motion drafted by Western governments accusing it of non-cooperation.
“Iran has started producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at the Fordo plant for the first time,” Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.
While 60 percent enriched uranium still isn’t technically weapons-grade (weapons require uranium enriched to 90 percent or higher), having a significant stockpile of it could reduce the time Iran would need to make a bomb.
Iran has always denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapon, insisting its nuclear activities are for civilian purposes only, but the U.S. and its allies — most notably Israel and major European powers — don’t trust Tehran.
Under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, Iran agreed to mothball the Fordo plant and limit its enrichment of uranium at other facilities to 3.67 percent, which is sufficient for most civilian uses, as part of a package of restrictions on its nuclear activities aimed at preventing it covertly developing a nuclear weapon. In return, major powers including the U.S. agreed to relax sanctions they had imposed over Iran’s nuclear program.
But the deal began falling apart in 2018 when then U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement and reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran unilaterally.
The following year, Iran began stepping away from its commitments under the deal. It reopened the Fordo plant and starting enriching uranium to higher levels.
A file photo released by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on November 6, 2019 shows a forklift carrying a cylinder containing uranium hexafluoride gas set to be injected for enrichment into centrifuges in Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility near the city of Qom, Iran.
France, Germany and the U.K., which were all party to the now-defunct 2015 nuclear agreement, expressed “grave concern” last year over Iran’s upgrade to 60 percent and said the Islamic Republic had “no credible civilian need for enrichment at this level.”
President Joe Biden has expressed a desire for Washington to return to a revived version of the agreement and on-off talks have been underway since April last year, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late last month that he saw little scope to restore the deal, as Iran battles nationwide protests sparked by the September death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman.
Commenting Tuesday on the Iranian announcement, U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley said Washington had seen Tehran’s response to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censure motion coming.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian response was not unexpected,” Malley told the Al Jazeera television network, adding that the U.S. would closely monitor the next steps taken by Iran.
Asked about negotiations to revive the nuclear deal, Malley said Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protests, and the Islamic Republic’s admitted sale of drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine, had turned the Washington’s focus away from the discussions.
Implementation of the 2015 deal was overseen by the IAEA, but the U.N. watchdog’s relations with Iran have declined sharply in recent months. The IAEA board of governors passed a resolution on Thursday criticizing Iran for its lack of cooperation.
Iran announced late Sunday that it had begun taking retaliatory measures but did not specify what they were.
“In response to the recent action of three European countries and the United States in the adoption of a resolution against Iran, some initial measures have been decided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
The ISNA news agency said the upgraded enrichment at Fordo was one part of Iran’s response.
Nov. 1, 2019 satellite image provided by provided by Maxar Technologies shows the Fordo nuclear facility, just north of the holy city of Qom in Iran
Maxar Technologies via AP
“As well, in a second action in response to the resolution, Iran injected (uranium hexafluoride) gas into two IR-2m and IR-4 cascades at the Natanz plant,” it said, referring to an older enrichment facility where uranium was already being enriched to 60 percent.
The U.N. watchdog has been pressing Iran to explain the discovery of traces of nuclear material at three sites it had not declared, a key sticking point that led to the adoption of an earlier censure motion by the IAEA in June.
In a report seen by AFP earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium stood at 3,673.7 kilograms as of October 22, a decrease of 267.2 kilograms from the last quarterly report. But that included significant stockpiles of uranium enriched to higher levels — 386.4 kilograms to 20 percent and 62.3 kilograms to 60 percent.
The IAEA complains that the ability of its inspectors to monitor Iran’s stepped-up nuclear activities has been hampered by restrictions imposed by Iran.
UNITED NATIONS — The United States and key Western allies accused Russia on Friday of using Iranian drones to attack civilians and power plants in Ukraine in violation of a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution and international humanitarian law.
Russia countered by accusing Ukraine of attacking infrastructure and civilians for eight years in the eastern separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed earlier this year.
The U.S., France, Germany and Britain supported Ukraine’s call for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to send a team to investigate the origin of the drones.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the drones are Russian and warned that an investigation would violate the U.N. Charter and seriously affect relations between Russia and the United Nations.
U.S. deputy ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis said that “the U.N. must investigate any violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions — and we must not allow Russia or others to impede or threaten the U.N. from carrying out its mandated responsibilities.”
The Western clash with Russia over attacks on civilians and infrastructure and the use of Iranian drones came at an open council meeting that also focused on the dire humanitarian situation in Ukraine as winter approaches. Almost 18 million people, more than 40% of Ukraine’s population, need humanitarian assistance, U.N. humanitarian coordinator Denise Brown says.
U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo expressed grave concern to the council that Russian missile and drone attacks between Oct. 10 and Oct. 18 in cities and towns across Ukraine killed at least 38 Ukrainian civilians, injured at least 117 and destroyed critical energy infrastructure, including power plants.
She cited the Ukrainian government’s announcement that 30% of the country’s energy facilities have been hit, most notably in the capital Kyiv and in the Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
“Combined with soaring gas and coal prices, the deprivation caused by these attacks threatens to expose millions of civilians to extreme hardship and even life-endangering conditions this winter,” she said.
DiCarlo, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, said that “under international humanitarian law, attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited.” So are “attacks against military objectives that may be expected to cause harm to civilians that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,” she said.
Nebenzia claimed that high-precision missile strikes and Russian drones — not Iranian drones — hit a large number of military targets that included infrastructure in an effort to degrade Ukrainian military activities.
“Of course, this did not sit well with the West and they became hysterical, and this is what we’re witnessing loudly and clearly today at the meeting,” the Russian ambassador said.
He said the West doesn’t want “to face facts” and acknowledge that civilian infrastructure was hit only in cases where drones had to change course because of Ukrainian defense actions. He said Ukrainian air defenses also hit civilian sites because they missed incoming attacks.
In a letter to the Security Council on Wednesday, Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Iran of violating a Security Council ban on the transfer of drones capable of flying 300 kilometers (about 185 miles).
That provision was part of Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six key nations — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear activities and preventing the country from developing a nuclear weapon.
U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018 and negotiations between the Biden administration and Iran for the United States to rejoin the deal have stalled.
Under the resolution, a conventional arms embargo on Iran was in place until October 2020. But restrictions on missiles and related technologies run until October 2023, and Western diplomats say that includes the export and purchase of advanced military systems such as drones, which are also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said Wednesday that he “categorically rejected unfounded and unsubstantiated claims that Iran has transferred UAVs for the use (in) the conflict in Ukraine.” He accused unnamed countries of trying to launch a disinformation campaign to “wrongly establish a link” with the U.N. resolution.
“Moreover, Iran is of the firm belief that none of its arms exports, including UAVs, to any country” violate Resolution 2231, he added.
France, Germany and Britain on Friday supported Ukraine’s accusation that Iranian has supplies drones to Russia in violation of the 2015 resolution and they are being used in attacks on civilians and power plants in Ukraine. They backed Kyiv’s call for a U.N. investigation.
The three European countries said in a joint letter to the 15 council members that reports in open sources suggest Iran intends to transfer more drones to Russia along with ballistic missiles.
Neither Iran nor Russia sought advance approval from the council for the transfer of Mohajer and Shahed UAVs and therefore “have violated resolution 2231,” the letter said.
The U.S. sent a similar letter, saying Iranian drones were transferred to Russia in late August and requesting the U.N. Secretariat team responsible for monitoring the resolution’s implementation to “conduct a technical and impartial investigation that assesses the type of UAV’s involved in these transfers.”
Nebenzia also sent a letter contending that DiCarlo is siding with the West on carrying out an investigation. His letter insists that “the U.N. Secretariat has no authority to conduct, or in any other form engage, in any `investigation’” related to Resolution 2231.
