On Monday, the Washington Post published an article on the growing tensions between Iran and the IAEA titled "With ‘sabotage’ charge, Iran takes hostile tone with U.N. watchdog".
The IAEA’s notoriously tense relations with Iran deteriorated sharply last month after the reported attacks by alleged saboteurs on electrical grids serving uranium-enrichment plants. Since then, Iranian officials have alleged the agency was directly involved in the attacks.
"So strident has been Iran’s criticism of the International Atomic Energy Agency in recent weeks that some Western officials fear that the country is preparing to officially downgrade its cooperation with the nuclear watchdog. The Vienna-based agency is the only international body allowed to routinely visit Iran’s most sensitive nuclear installations," the author of the article, Joby Warrick, writes."Since mid-August, U.N. teams have been the targets of anti-IAEA protests in the capital, and inspectors have been privately warned that they could be held responsible for any future attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities by saboteurs or foreign governments," the article refers to diplomatic sources.
"U.S. officials fear that even a temporary halt in U.N. oversight could provide Iran with an opportunity to launch a crash program to build a nuclear weapon. A draft engineering study prepared by a Washington research group projects that Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear device in two to four months, using its existing stockpiles of low-enriched uranium,"the author of the article warns .
