Name: Nuclear energy experts react to Iran nuclear facility damage
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T21:36:39.000Z
Duration: 9 min 11 s
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Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It's good to have you, sir, and thank you for joining us.

Your organization has confirmed damage to the Natanz fuel enrichment plant.

I just want to get some details view of the damage.

We've got an aerial image here showing the damage.

It is hard to understand what we are looking at.

So if you could just take me through that.

Well, yes, it's good to talk to you today, Becky.

Since the beginning, of course, of this episode of confrontation between Israel, the United States and Iran, we have been following very, very closely the situation with regards to the nuclear facilities.

Of course, you may remember that last year the whole campaign was actually, I would say very focused on the nuclear facilities, which has not been the case this time around with less focus on them.

But between yesterday and today we finally got images that we have been analyz some partial strikes on as you say, on Natanz.

They seem to be rather limited, aiming at one portal and one access to them and something perhaps also on Isfahan.

So this is as far as we can say it's not at the scale and dimension of what we saw last year.

For now, of course, because the conflict is ongoing, can change very rapidly.

Let me just, let me just ask you about one other site or another site before we move on and find out what your sort of lines of communication are with Iran at the moment, Russia raising alarm over the impact on Bushehre nuclear plant.

Now, this is a plant that sits opposite and in close proximity to Gulf countries and has been a constant source of concern for many in the part of the world where I am.

Should it be targeted either intentionally or accidentally.

Well, of course we should say first of all that there has been no impact or no attack registered on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is an operating nuclear power plant.

So completely different in dimension and possible consequences to a place where you have some nuclear material stored here there would be an impact.

And I remember and we discussed that at the time there was a lot of concern in the area where you live and other countries.

We were giving a lot of advice and indication and guidance to the nuclear safety regulatory agencies in all the region in case something occurred.

I was very clear last Monday the board of governors of the IEA indicating of course that nuclear facilities should never be attacked and in particular this one because it's the one that really would pose a serious environmental risk.

So let's just talk about what you know and what you don't know at this point.

I mean, do you currently have any direct lines of communication with Iran and how often are you actually talking to them about inspections and nuclear safety at this point?

Well, I don't think we can have a normal dialogue at time of war.

There is a sense of, I would say common sense that indicates that we could not be discussing with Iran inspections or anything like that.

We have a contact with Iranian diplomats and other informal channels with people in Tehran.

this is regrettable, we have lost communication with the nuclear safety and regulatory authorities in Iran since the beginning of the hostilities there.

It might be an issue of communication, but

we haven't been in touch with them, which would be very, very important.

That has been part of the narrative in the run up to this war.

CNN reporting indicates that Donald Trump and his top officials overstated just how close Tehran was to developing a nuclear weapon before beginning this round of strikes over the weekend.

What was the status of that program as you understand it before those strikes began on Saturday?

Well, the program was very slow, I would say because the attacks last year were very important.

The damage was considerable on all the main nuclear facilities, Fordow or Esfahan and Natanz, on all these places where they have the main activities.

There are other places in Iran, of course you mentioned Bushehr, but

there is the terror Iran research reactor and there's a number of facilities there.

But these were the main, that was the core of the big nuclear program there.

And that was of course perhaps we could say frozen, if not almost stopped.

So Rafael, I'm just going to ask you this.

Were the Iranians days or weeks away from, from building a bomb, from having a bomb?

I repeated it again this time that while there are many elements there that were of serious concern, accumulation, unjustified accumulation of huge amounts of almost military grade material, lack of transparency in inspections and so on, I could enumerate a list of things.

We never had information indicating that there was a structured systematic program to build, to construct a nuclear weapon.

Yes, many reasons for concern, but there wasn't to be a bomb tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

that is the case for the United States or Israel and perhaps others may have the impression that all these activities are aimed directly and straight into the manufacturing of a nuclear weapon.

We from the IAEA are not in the business of judging intentions.

But yes, there were reasons for concern, but these timelines are perhaps a bit subjective.

To talk about these facilities, obviously all of them were part of the massive strikes last summer.

That supposedly obliterated Iran's nuclear program.

Now we're seeing these additional strikes.

Are you able to tell anything from this image as you look at it?

Well, it's clear that the facility itself is still intact.

So the amount of damage that the United States and Israel could have done clearly wasn't imposed on these facilities.

I think there are major questions, as your lead in suggested, about whether the administration's justification for this war preventing Iran from getting access to a nuclear weapon were justified.

But if there were serious concerns, you would imagine that the first things this administration would want to destroy are all of Iran's nuclear facilities in total.

And it's not just the satellite photographs that you've presented.

There's a headline now in the New York Times that in fact, the most likely storage facility for the 60% enriched uranium at Isfahan also appears to have been untouched.

So I think there are a lot of questions about the administration's strategy and its justification.

But if you are going to go to war to prevent proliferation, you would target facilities and they appear to be intact.

And it looks as if both they are targeting, but they are leaving them intact.

Given what we've seen about the strike so far, it would seem.

I mean, tell me if you think I'm wrong, but it would seem that that's purposeful.

I mean, do you think that's purposeful and some part of some broader strategy here?

Well, I think it's very hard with this administration to interpret from afar.

If this was in the Obama administration, the Biden administration, the Bush administration, you assume some level of coordination.

I don't think we have seen that level of coordination politically in terms of when the strikes took place.

And I think in terms of linking the president's stated goals for the war and the actual military operations, there are clearly something.

Ship, air, defense, anything that CENTCOM commander would view as a threat to operations.

But if the goal is to prevent access to a nuclear weapon, you have to go in and strike all the nuclear facilities and obliterate them.