Iran dismisses IAEA report on 'undeclared changes' at Fordow site

• 

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) strongly denied a United Nations nuclear watchdog assessment that Iran had made an unreported upgrade to uranium enrichment equipment at its Fordow nuclear site.

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Mohammad Eslami described the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) report as "unprofessional".

“This behavior is unprofessional and is unacceptable and we hope that the agency’s director general stops such practices because this is not acceptable for his and the agency’s credibility,” he said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Eslami stated that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi chose to reveal wrong claims raised in the report in a confidential letter given to the media on February 1.

This comes shortly after the International Atomic Energy Agency claimed, on Wednesday, its inspectors discovered a change to an interconnection between two clusters of centrifuges that differed significantly from what Iran had stated to the agency.

The alleged change was discovered by the IAEA on Jan. 21 at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, where inspectors are currently expediting inspections after Iran announced that it was drastically increasing enrichment.

The IAEA did not specify how the interconnection between the two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges had been altered in a confidential report to member states seen by Reuters, saying only that "they were interconnected in a way that was substantially different from the mode of operation declared by Iran (to the IAEA)."

In response to an IAEA anti-Iran resolution drafted and pushed by the US and EU, Iran announced in November that it initiated enriching uranium at the Fordow nuclear power plant at a 60% purity level.

The IAEA was notified by Tehran about the decision in a letter, stating that this is to convey a strong message after the board of the UN nuclear energy passed the politically-oriented resolution.

It is worth noting that Iran previously mentioned that IR-1 centrifuges at the Fordow plant were replaced by IR-6 advanced centrifuges that would speed up enrichment 10-fold and are approved under a law previously passed by the Iranian Parliament back in 2020 in response to the illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on the country.

While the IAEA's eyes are solely on Iran, the latter has constantly warned that the Israeli advanced nuclear program poses a serious threat to international security and stability. Concurrently, Russia has repeatedly raised a red flag regarding the consequences if Ukraine uses the "dirty bomb".