IAEA chief says Iran inspections deal 'possible but terribly difficult' after 12-day war

LONDON

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said a new agreement with Iran on nuclear inspections is “absolutely possible” but “terribly difficult” following what he described as a dramatic shift in the country’s nuclear landscape after the recent 12-day war between Iran and Israel.

“An agreement with Iran on inspections is technically possible and it is politically even viable but difficult,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said during an event at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

Grossi said the conflict had “changed radically” the situation surrounding Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

“After the 12-day war, the whole landscape of nuclear Iran has changed radically in terms of perhaps not capabilities, but in terms of actual physical infrastructure, which is basically no longer there or badly damaged,” he said.

He pointed to facilities at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo, suggesting that the previous “impressive array of so many facilities dealing with different aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle” may no longer exist in the same form.

Any future agreement, he said, would have to focus not only on what remains but also on “what kind of nuclear Iran can emerge from this new situation.”

Grossi stressed that Iran, as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has the right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities. However, he acknowledged “the reality of a political restraint, which is being very clearly articulated by the US and perhaps others.”

IAEA inspectors have returned to Iran, though they have not been able to access damaged facilities. “We have been inspecting, if I can put it in simple terms, everything but the attacked facilities,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Grossi said dialogue had resumed. “Some said, with this war, it is over. You will never see monitoring in Iran again… So we were able to work again to establish some form of dialog, imperfect and complicated and extremely difficult.”

He described the coming days as “a very, very crucial moment,” raising the possibility of “light at the end of the tunnel” towards a new arrangement.

Israel launched attacks on Iran on June 13, 2025, sparking a war marked by tit-for-tat airstrikes, raising fears of a broader regional conflict.

Several senior Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists were killed in Israeli airstrikes that targeted Tehran and other cities, including Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Gen. Hossein Salami, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and senior IRGC commander Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, head of the central headquarters of the Iranian military.