The IAEA discovers a modification of Iran's nuclear facilities for the production of enriched uranium

VIENNA, 2 Feb. (DPA/EP) -

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has discovered that Iran would have secretly modified a facility for the production of highly enriched uranium, violating the obligation to inform the agency about such steps.

This was reported this Wednesday by the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, who has detailed that the plant has been producing uranium with a purity of up to 60 percent since the end of 2022, as reported by the German news agency DPA.

The find was made by IAEA inspectors, who discovered during an unannounced inspection of the nuclear facility in the village of Fordo, south of Tehran, where the enrichment machines had been "significantly" modified since November.

Grossi has previously noted that Iran is thus approaching the 90 percent enrichment level needed to produce nuclear weapons, despite Iranian politicians for years insisting that they do not want to build nuclear weapons.

However, the IAEA has not specified whether this new modification would have increased the level of Iranian enrichment, according to the aforementioned agency.

Last week, Grossi told the European Parliament that Iran already had enough uranium to make several nuclear weapons if the material continued to be enriched. However, Tehran would still have a long way to go with technical and political obstacles before it could build such weapons, the IAEA director general stressed.

Iran pledged in 2015 to limit its nuclear program. In return, Western sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran were lifted.

However, after the United States unilaterally withdrew from the pact in 2018, Tehran gradually reversed the restrictions. Negotiations to restore the nuclear pact have been frozen for months.