VIENNA (Reuters) -Iran still has not let inspectors into the nuclear sites Israel and the United States bombed in June, the U.N. atomic watchdog said in a confidential report on Wednesday, adding that accounting for Iran’s enriched uranium stock is “long overdue”.
The IAEA’s own guidelines stipulate that it should verify a country’s stock of highly enriched uranium, such as the material enriched to up to 60% purity in Iran, a short step from the roughly 90% of weapons grade, every month.
The IAEA has been calling on Iran for months to say what happened to the stock and let inspections fully resume quickly. The two sides announced an agreement in Cairo in September that was supposed to pave the way for a full resumption but progress has been limited, and Iran now says that agreement is void.
“The Agency’s lack of access to this nuclear material in Iran for five months means that its verification … is long overdue,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in the report to member states seen by Reuters.
“It is critical that the Agency is able to verify the inventories of previously declared nuclear material in Iran as soon as possible in order to allay its concerns … regarding the possible diversion of declared nuclear material from peaceful use,” it added.
The report reiterated that the quantity of highly enriched uranium Iran has produced and accumulated is “a matter of serious concern”. The IAEA has now lost so-called continuity of knowledge of Iran’s enriched uranium stocks, it added, meaning re-establishing a full picture will be long and difficult.
The agency has so far only inspected some of the 13 nuclear facilities that were “unaffected” by the attacks and none of the seven that were.
Before the attacks, which completely destroyed one of Iran’s three enrichment facilities operating at the time and at least badly damaged the others, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% in uranium hexafluoride form, which can be fed into centrifuges for further enrichment.
That is enough material in principle, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA yardstick.
As a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran must send a special, detailed report to the IAEA on the status of the bombed facilities “without delay” but still has not done so, the report said. Only then can the IAEA inspect them.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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