Iran Rebuilds Nuclear Sites as Regime Debates NPT Exit — SkimNews
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- Masoud Pezeshkian told Fox News Iran is prepared to dilute its 60% enriched uranium stockpile and submit its nuclear program to international inspection under the NPT, provided a comprehensive agreement is reached within international law.
- Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said US and Israeli actions created grounds for Iran to withdraw from the NPT, though he stressed no formal decision has been made yet.
- The Daily Telegraph reported on September 19 that satellite imagery shows Iran rebuilding "Taleghan 2" at the Parchin complex and a facility under Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz, both previously struck during the US-Israel Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion airstrikes.
- The IAEA Board of Governors referred Iran to the UN Security Council on September 9 over alleged non-proliferation breaches, while the 60-day technical talks window under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding expired in mid-August without resolution.
- Mojtaba Khamenei has not reaffirmed his late father Ali Khamenei's fatwa banning nuclear weapons production since becoming supreme leader following the elder Khamenei's death in an Israeli airstrike, a silence former AIVD officer Tim Bosch told DW carries "significant weight."
- Former US national security adviser John Bolton told DW that Iran's weapons program was "never" truly halted and argued that "the only long-term path to achieving peace and security in the Middle East is the overthrow of the regime in Tehran."
- The IAEA's December 2024 assessment found Iran was the only non-nuclear state with uranium enriched to 60%, but with inspectors now barred from sites, Bosch said "no intelligence agency can honestly claim to know whether Iran has made the final decision to build a bomb."
Why it matters: With the IAEA's 60-day talks window already expired and inspectors barred from sites, the divergence between Pezeshkian's diplomatic overtures and hardline rhetoric — combined with the new supreme leader's silence on the anti-nuclear fatwa — means any future agreement would be negotiated without baseline verification of Iran's current enrichment levels, which the IAEA assessed at 60% in December 2024.
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