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Newshour

Iran could start enriching uranium for bomb within months, UN nuclear chief says

Newshour

BBC

News, Daily News

4.4984 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Iran has the capacity to start enriching uranium again - for a possible bomb - in "a matter of months", Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said. In an interview with CBS news, Mr Grossi also said the US strikes on three Iranian sites last weekend had caused severe but "not total" damage, contradicting President Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear facilities were "totally obliterated".

Also on the programme: one of Hong Kong's last remaining pro-democracy groups, the League of Social Democrats, has announced that it will disband; and we hear from The Who's Pete Townsend about the ballet version of the group's Quadrophenia album and film.

(Photo: IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi in Vienna, Austria on 25 June, 2025. Credit: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, welcome to the program. This is News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm Paul Henley.

0:11.2

The chief of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has said that Iran has the capacity to start enriching uranium again in a matter of months for a possible bomb.

0:23.1

In an interview with the BBC's US partner CBS News,

0:27.0

he says there is severe damage to Iran's nuclear sites after last weekend strikes by American stealth bombers,

0:33.4

but not total damage.

0:35.5

Iran had a very vast, ambitious program, and part of it may still be there.

0:42.7

And if not, there is also the self-evident truth that the knowledge is there, the industrial

0:49.3

capacity is there. Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology, as is obvious.

0:56.7

Military operations or not, you are not going to solve this in a definitive way militarily.

1:02.5

Mr. Grosse's time frame contrasts with the comments from Donald Trump, who says Iran's nuclear

1:08.2

program has been obliterated and the CIA, which says it will take years to rebuild.

1:13.9

Let's look at reaction now in Israel. Amir Oran writes for various publications on national security and politics in Israel.

1:21.5

So there's increasing expert opinion that Iran's nuclear program has not been destroyed in these strikes, although President Trump insists it's obliterated.

1:30.1

I asked Amir what the Israeli government thought.

1:33.7

The Israeli government never had any realistic expectation

1:38.0

that the Iranian nuclear project, infrastructure, assets,

1:43.9

whatever you want to call it, would be completely

1:47.0

destroyed. The goal was to set it back a year or so, hopefully a couple of years, but it was

1:56.0

well known in advance that the main impediment to the weaponization of the Iranian nuclear material

2:04.1

was the political will, and that is Hamene's decision not to direct his subordinates

2:12.4

to produce such a weapon, and that if now he changes his mind, then the timetable could be shortened.

2:20.7

And therefore, no one ever said in Israel either before or after that it was destroyed.

...

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