Rafael Grossi is the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As such, he’s been in charge of keeping tabs on Iran’s nuclear program in order to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons. On Grossi’s watch, the IAEA has been given the runaround. Iran has ruled some sites off-limits to IAEA inspectors. It has also failed to explain to the IAEA the appearance of uranium particles at several sites where there was not supposed to be any enrichment work going on. Iran has managed to keep enriching uranium, without the IAEA becoming aware until it was too late. The quarterly report of the IAEA put out this February has now confirmed that Iran has enriched uranium to a near-weapons-grade level of 84%. Just with the stockpile it now has of 60% enriched uranium, Iran can produce enough weapons-grade (90% enriched) uranium for a nuclear weapon in 12 days. And this all happened on Grossi’s watch.
Now Grossi, on a visit to Tehran, has declared that any attack on Iran’s nuclear program would be “illegal.” This astonishing claim, which has no foundation in international law, drew a firm response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A preliminary Jihad Watch report on this is here, and a full report on Grossi’s remark and Netanyahu’s riposte, can be found here: “Netanyahu blasts IAEA head for saying attack on Iran would be ‘illegal,’” JNS, March 5, 2023:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday [March 5] criticized as “unworthy of the man” International Atomic Agency Director Raphael Grossi’s statement a day earlier that any attack Iran’s nuclear program would be illegal.
“Against which law?” said Netanyahu at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting. “Is Iran, which openly calls for our destruction, permitted to defend the destructive weapons that would slaughter us? Are we permitted to defend ourselves? It is clear that we are, and it is clear that we will do so.”
Rafael Grossi, he said, was “a worthy gentleman who said something unworthy.”
Noting that it was Purim eve, the Israeli premier said, “2,500 years ago an enemy arose in Persia who sought to destroy the Jews. They did not succeed then, neither will they succeed today.”
Following a meeting in Tehran on Saturday, Grossi said during a joint press conference with Mohammed Eslami, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, that “I think any attack, any military attack on a nuclear facility is outlaw[ed]—is out of the normative structures that we all abide by.”
The two-day meeting was a bid by the IAEA to convince Iran to cooperate as the U.N. nuclear watchdog seeks to monitor the country’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with world powers.
The IAEA director said there were “great expectations” in the talks, which had expressed “readiness” to cooperate.
According to a statement released by the parties on Saturday [March 3], the two sides agreed to work in a spirit of collaboration. Specifically, Grossi said that Tehran will allow the IAEA to reinstall some monitoring equipment that was removed last year….
Why is Iran suddenly agreeing to a re-installation of cameras and other monitoring equipment that had been removed at its insistence just last year? Iran may have concluded that it is so far along in its nuclear program that it no longer has to conduct any enrichment work at the particular sites where the monitoring equipment, having been removed, will now be put back. In short — “Nothing to see here.”
But the main reason for the change in Iran’s tone is that the Iranians want to be seen as fully cooperating with the IAEA, after years of attempting to deceive it. Despite their bluster, they are terrified that Israel may be readying a military attack, and they want to head it off by being as outwardly reasonable as possible toward the IAEA, hoping it will take Iran’s side by trying to head off an Israeli attack. And in fact, that is exactly what has happened. Rafael Grossi fell into Tehran’s trap, and publicly proclaimed that “I think any attack, any military attack on a nuclear facility is outlaw[ed]—is out of the normative structures that we all abide by.”
What is he talking about? Grossi “thinks” that a military attack on a nuclear facility is “outlawed”? He “thinks” that such an attack is “out of the normative structures that we all abide by”? But he does not offer any basis in international law for what he “thinks” should be the case. Nor Is such an attack “out of the normative structures that we all abide by.” Does Rafael Grossi not remember the attack by Israel on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981? Saddam Hussein had made many blood-curdling threats to destroy the Jewish state, and the IDF was taking no chances. Had Israel not destroyed Osirak in Operation Opera, the butcher of Baghdad might have acquired nuclear weapons that he would certainly have used on Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Or he might have threatened their use if the Americans dared to interfere with his invasion and seizure of Kuwait, proclaiming it to be Iraq’s nineteenth province, in 1990. The civilized countries of the world – and especially the United States — applauded Israel’s destruction of Osirak. None of them said the attack was “illegal.” Nor did the IAEA, or the UN.
Does Rafael Grossi think that Israel’s destruction of Syria’s nuclear reactor at the Al-Kibar site, in the Deir Ez-Zor region of Syria, on September 6, 2007 was “illegal”? No country – not even the other Arab countries – described it as such. The Director of the IAEA at the time, Egyptian diplomat Mohamed el-Baradei, did not call the strike “illegal.” Inside the US government, there was great admiration for Israel’s ability to complete its missions to Baghdad and then to Al-Kibar, and to flatten both reactors. The Americans had been kept abreast of Israeli plans for months before the raid. They didn’t think then, and haven’t thought since, that what Israel did at Al-Kibar was “illegal.”
If those attacks by Israel on the Iraq and Syrian nuclear reactors had been “illegal,” why is it that the IAEA did not describe them as such? Someone should ask Rafael Grossi if he cares to characterize them today as having been “illegal.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu was restrained in his comment on Grossi’s remark that he “thinks” an attack on a nuclear facility would be “illegal.” He said that the remark was “unworthy” of Grossi, whom he was careful to call a “worthy” man. He doesn’t want to make an enemy of the Director of the IAEA.
At the end of February, Netanyahu told a security conference in Tel Aviv that “I can tell you that I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” You know what that means.
Israel would, of course, like to share with the Americans the burden of dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat, but the Bidenites are apparently against it. As it did in Iraq in 1981, and in Syria in 2007, the Israeli Air Force will all on its own have to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. And as in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007, the IAF will manage to pulverize its targets, astonish its enemies, and win the admiration, yet again, of all genuinely peace-loving people.
Linde B. says
I believe that George Soros is one of President Biden’s secret “handlers”.
And we Americans have to find a way
to legally bankrupt George Soros, as
he hates the Jews and Israel, doesn’t he?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Westman says
“The quarterly report of the IAEA put out this February has now confirmed that Iran has enriched uranium to a near-weapons-grade level of 84%”
Good God, wake up!
“The very first uranium bomb, Little Boy, dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945, used 64 kilograms of 80% enriched uranium.” That’s NOT 90%
Iran has reached 83.7%
OLD GUY says
The I.A.E.A, International Atomic Energy Agency which means what? It appears they have little if any ability to stop the development of nuclear bombs by any country that wants to develop one. Just more talking heads with NO clout.