Grossi tells the Security Council Iran’s 440.9 kilograms of 60 percent uranium remain unverified
The IAEA chief briefed the Council on Tuesday for the first time since the September non-compliance referral, reporting no sign of reconstruction at bombed sites and no inspector access to confirm it.
Rafael Grossi briefed the UN Security Council on Tuesday 27 October under the non-proliferation agenda item, in a session requested by Bahrain, Denmark, France, Latvia, the United Kingdom and the United States, following the 9 September Board of Governors resolution finding Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards agreement and referring the file to New York. The agency’s accounting, as reported by AP, AFP and Anadolu, is that Iran holds a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent — rendered as 440 kilograms in Anadolu’s write-up — and that the IAEA cannot verify it, having had no access to key nuclear facilities since the twelve-day conflict of June 2025. Grossi asked Iran to “work with the IAEA without further delay in order to clarify outstanding issues” and, in AFP’s rendering, called granting access “Iran’s legal obligation.”
The second finding cut the other way: Grossi said there has been no indication Iran has tried to repair or reconstruct the nuclear facilities damaged in US and Israeli strikes this year and last, and Tehran maintains the programme is peaceful. The Council’s own division was visible before anyone spoke. Members had to vote to adopt the agenda, carrying it 11 in favour to two against — Russia and China — with two abstentions, one of them Pakistan on Anadolu’s account; the second abstainer is not established in the wire text available. Fox News’s live file reports the US envoy, Mike Waltz, telling the chamber “Your lies are no good here.” That quote rests on a single outlet and has not been checked against the UN verbatim record.
Assessment: The two findings are not a contradiction, they are the same hole seen from two sides. Grossi can say nothing has been rebuilt because satellites see rooftops; he cannot say where 440.9 kilograms sits because that requires people on the ground. The figure is a last-known inventory carried forward, not a current measurement, and it will harden into a talking point in both directions — proof of concealment in Washington, proof of restraint in Tehran. Watch the agenda vote rather than the briefing: with Russia and China opposed to even hearing the item, the referral has no enforcement route through this Council, which is precisely why the stockpile question keeps returning to the IAEA’s podium instead.