Grossi tells the Security Council Iran is not rebuilding, and that 440 kilograms are unaccounted for

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi briefed the UN Security Council for the first time on Tuesday 27 October, delivering two findings that pull in opposite directions: there is no sign Iran is rebuilding its nuclear sites, and 440 kilograms of uranium remain unaccounted for, according to AP copy carried by Arab News. Grossi told the Council that any settlement must include Agency verification, “without which, no solution is verifiable and, as a consequence, sustainable,” and urged Tehran to consider “gradual, technical, incremental steps” towards restoring normal safeguards. He had told the General Assembly earlier in the month that the Agency was “ready” to do the technical work, and on 23 October called for a swift return of inspectors, warning of growing fragility in the non-proliferation regime. The briefing follows the September Board resolution directing him to report Iran’s non-compliance with its NPT safeguards agreement to the Council and calling on Iran to “urgently remedy” it.

Assessment: This is the file that decides whether anything agreed in Doha survives the week it is signed. A seven-day ladder of confidence-building measures cannot produce verification; at best it produces access, and access is what Grossi is asking for in instalments precisely because he cannot get it in full. Two things to hold carefully. “Unaccounted for” is a safeguards accounting term covering material the Agency cannot currently verify — it is not an assertion of diversion. And the finding that nothing is being rebuilt is a statement about what the Agency can observe, made by a man simultaneously pleading for his inspectors to be let back in. Whoever controls the inspection sequence controls the option to restart the war.