UN nuclear watchdog increasingly concerned about Iranian enrichment plant, report says
The United Nations nuclear watchdog is "increasingly concerned" about a uranium-enrichment plant at Isfahan that Iran declared to it last year but has still not let the watchdog inspect, it said in a confidential report on Iran on Friday seen by Reuters and The Associated Press. Iran has not let International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors return to any of its nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the United States in a 12-day campaign in June last year that destroyed or badly damaged Iran's other uranium enrichment plants, the heart of its nuclear program.
The targets included a tunnel network at Isfahan where diplomats have said they believe the Isfahan Fuel Enrichment Plant (IFEP) — declared to the agency on June 12, 2025 — is located, though a senior diplomat said that its whereabouts and status remained unknown. The IAEA had planned to inspect the plant on June 13, 2025, but the bombing campaign started that day, making it impossible. "The agency does not know IFEP's exact location, status for safeguards purposes or whether it contains nuclear material," the confidential IAEA report to member states said, adding that "the agency is also increasingly concerned that Iran has not permitted" it to inspect the plant or see design plans.
Left out here: Leaves out what changes the picture
The article never says that Iran told the IAEA in February that the Isfahan plant itself had come under attack, a claim the agency says it cannot verify. Without it a reader sees only Iran's refusal of access as the reason the plant's status is unknown, and not Iran's own account of what happened to it. The article does say the tunnel network was among the targets, so the gap does not change the picture much.
How we know
- i24News reported“Iran told the IAEA in February that the plant itself had come under attack, but the agency has been unable to verify that claim”IAEA raises alarm over lack of access to Iran’s Isfahan enrichment plant (opens in a new tab)
Iran said the situation won't resolve "until the root causes of the present situation are addressed and the essential requirements for normal safeguards implementation are restored," the report added. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said in March his agency believed a significant amount of Iran's most highly enriched uranium was in the tunnel complex at Isfahan. While the report singled out IFEP, it also reiterated that Iran should inform the IAEA of the status of its enrichment plants, as well as its stock of highly enriched uranium, which includes material close to weapons grade, and let inspectors return to the bombed sites and account for the enriched uranium.
"The agency's lack of information about this nuclear material and access to facilities to verify it is a matter of serious proliferation concern … and needs to be rectified with the utmost urgency," it said. Iran also expressed concern in a letter to the IAEA about a recent U.S. offer of a reward of up to $20 million US in exchange for information on Iran's nuclear program. Tehran stressed the importance of maintaining the "confidentiality" of the IAEA's activities and the need to ensure that information on Iran's nuclear program is not "disclosed, misused or exploited."
The IAEA encouraged Iran to "consider technical and gradual measures" to allow for a return of inspectors to Iran. The only facility inspected in Iran by the IAEA since last June is the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Inspectors conducted an inspection there on Sept. 12-15. The reactor currently running at Bushehr uses uranium from Russia enriched to 4.5 per cent — a low level needed for power generation in such plants. The U.S. and Israel launched further military strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 with attacks that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.
The strikes targeted Revolutionary Guard command facilities, air defence systems, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields. According to the IAEA , Iran maintains a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 per cent purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent. That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, Grossi warned in an interview with The Associated Press last year.
He added that it doesn't mean that Iran has such a weapon. Such highly enriched nuclear material should normally be verified every month, according to the IAEA's guidelines. Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.
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