UN nuclear chief warns Iran must not become ‘failure’ like N Korea

VIENNA: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog has called on the international community to make every effort to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and becoming a “failure” like North Korea.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has since 2021 been struggling to monitor Iran´s nuclear programme, which Tehran has stepped up, denying that it seeks to build a bomb.

“We have to deploy every effort... to prevent a country that has capabilities which could potentially lead to the development of nuclear weapons from doing it,” Rafael Grossi told a US State Department non-proliferation conference in a recorded video message.

“We saw the failure of this type in the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea, North Korea”, which conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 despite diplomatic efforts, he said in a speech seen on Tuesday by AFP.

Inspectors from the IAEA were kicked out of North Korea in 2009, and the agency has since monitored it from outside, including through commercial satellite imagery. The “uncertainties and dangers on the Korean peninsula and in Asia” have since increased, Grossi said.