IAEA失去伊朗核查权限，前能源部长警告核风险升级

The IAA director, general Rafael Ghossef was a guest on Bloomberg Surveillance. And at the moment, of course, there's no engagement. Nothing is happening. We are not getting any any cooperation from Iran. Things, of course, degrade. We are losing institutional memory and and knowledge, continuity of knowledge of what is happening there. There's a lot of material and highly enriched uranium, as you know, very well. Meanwhile, the IAEA says it's observed construction activity at Iran's Pickaxe Mountain site, which is suspected of housing nuclear related activities.

Joining us now is Ernest Moniz, the former US secretary of energy, former CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He is now the CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative. Secretary Moniz, thank you very much for being with us once again. I know that you know doctor Grossi well, and and I wanna just ask you first picking up on his complaints about access sort of not having that. Where does that leave the international community in assessing what is or isn't happening inside Iran at this point in time?

Well, David, this is quite serious. I think as you know, we have said consistently since 2015 to today that the most important part of the 2015 agreement with Iran was in fact establishing these extraordinary verification and transparency measures carried out by Rafael Grossi's team. So that's been pretty much shut down now for quite a few years. And as he emphasized, the loss of continuity of knowledge is extremely serious.

Indeed, if an agreement is reached, that, of course, is very much in question at the moment. But even if reached, it's gonna be extraordinary diff difficult. Frankly, I don't know how to really restore the continuity of knowledge that has been lost. Can you remind us one of the big criticisms of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, was that, okay. Yes. You have inspectors in there, but Iran is cheating. They're hiding things.

They're not playing fair. But inspectors I've spoken to have said it it doesn't matter. I mean, it does, but they can tell things just by being on the ground. Can you talk to us about the kinds of things inspectors can see even if they're not being shown the whole picture? Well, first of all, I would question whether they're not being shown the whole picture in the sense that the extraordinary measures that I mentioned included something that's called the additional protocol.

And what that means is that the IAEA, if it suspects a nondeclared Iranian site, that is some a place that could be being used for covert nuclear activity, they have the right, to, ask for access to that, and with the JCPOA, be granted that access in a relatively short short period. So that's very, important. What it does is it doesn't say that, you know, there's a 100% certainty that you will see everything. No one can ever say that.

But the bar gets raised very, very high, and the risks and the consequences of cheating on that by Iran would be extremely extremely serious. So the inspectors, in addition, they earned the opportunity to use all of the modern technology, including not so modern technology like cameras, this this kind of thing. But also what's very important is over time, they get to know the people, the Iranians who are who are doing the work, etcetera.

So the the the level of knowledge just keeps growing and growing and growing. It's very cumulative, and and they learn how they are very highly trained. In fact, it's well known that The United States is among many countries that play a role in training these inspectors, and they they can sense when it's time to ask for access elsewhere. In fact, I've said, and I and I would repeat it, that, for example, if we reached a new agreement that said Iran is not going to enrich in the future, enrich uranium in the future, but we don't have something like the additional protocol, it's frankly meaningless because any country, including Iran, in my view, is much more likely to pursue a nuclear weapon through covert activity than through overt activity.

I assume you've heard the the certitude and bombast from this administration about the efficacy of those strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. And I wonder if you could talk a bit about what Rafael Grossi said is happening at this site, Pickaxe Mountain, and what that says just about the state of the country's nuclear program. We had Iran's president in New Delhi today talking about how no country's civilian nuclear program should be attacked by by an outside force here.

What do you make of this news as reported by mister Grossi? Well, first of all, David, let me go back a a step and say that first of all, of course, with the 2015 agreement, the most strict nuclear provision was that Iran would be restricted to 300 kilograms of uranium enriched to no more than 3.67. Very, very low in enrichment and a low a low inventory. Unfortunately, when The United States withdrew from that agreement, we now face a situation where Iran has about 10 tons of enriched uranium and about half a ton, almost half a ton enriched to 60.

My main point is that the 60% uranium is already directly usable in a nuclear bomb. There is kind of a fiction that is widely held that one needs to go all the way to so called weapons grade, 90% enriched to have a weapon. That that is not true. It's less efficient, but but it's it's already there. I put that out because it means that the bombings of twenty of twenty twenty five on those facilities clearly were aimed at not only dismantling their current enrichment capability or their then current ability, but also at trying to make that 60% uranium not not usable.

I would say we don't know whether that is true or not. Now that brings us to Pickaxe Mountain. What we don't know is whether, for example, some of that directly usable material is in Pickaxe Mountain, perhaps at a depth where even our biggest bombs, conventional bombs, cannot cannot reach it. I would say, to my knowledge at least, and I don't have access to the classified material, but to my knowledge at least, we just don't know a lot of what's happening.

And all the recent construction that you alluded to around Pickaxe Mountain is certainly of concern because they could be building factories, they could be building bombs, frankly, in there. We we don't have much insight. The clearest insight would likely have to come today from, human intelligence. And, of course, some of our allies well, of course, Israel in particular has shown a real ability to, to understand, what's going on through through human intelligence.

And CSIS did an analysis of, to your point, what you can see externally. And they said they're looking at five key points of interest in the roads connecting them, indicating the site has shifted from active excavation towards probable internal construction and continued exterior reinforcement. I'm more familiar with Ferro and Natanz. I had not heard of this site before. What was there previously? Do we know? Well, it's close to Natanh's, but but it's a separate site.

And, the idea is that they are simply going deeper and deeper, and that's why these military actions, you know, buy some time, but it it just drives them further underground. And Pickaxe Mountain is viewed as a very, very hard target. As my as I understand it, a lot of a lot of granite and very and very, very deep. So The United States showed in in its bombing of, for example, the Isfahan facility that and Fordow, etcetera, that we tend to attack at weak points such as access points.

But the reality is that can be dug out pretty quickly if the internals survive survive military strikes. Yeah. And frankly, I have to say that while the twenty twenty five bombings of Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan did clearly, you know, physical damage to the to the nuclear sites, it's not so clear that the war, since February of this year, has accomplished very much on the nuclear side. I wanna go to what was a part of your remit when you were the secre