Nuclear Watchdog Warns of Growing Risk of Arms Race in Trump Era
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says more countries are considering whether they need their own deterrent.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi at the organization's headquarters in Vienna.
Photographer: Michaela Nagyidaiová/BloombergThe Fordow Fuel Enrichment plant is buried underneath a mountain just south of Iran’s Holy City of Qom. When Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited in November, he emerged with an acute sense of urgency.
The 64-year-old Argentinian has spent more than a decade trying to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. At Fordow, Iranian engineers began enriching uranium to just below the level needed for a bomb, after US President Donald Trump withdrew from a key arms-control agreement in 2018. Now, Grossi says, there is a growing debate between different factions in Iran over whether the country may finally need to go further, and build a nuclear deterrent to guarantee its security.