The UN nuclear watchdog chief travels to Iran as its monitoring remains hampered

The head of the United Nations' atomic watchdog will travel Monday to Iran, where his agency faces increasing difficulty in monitoring the Islamic Republic's rapidly advancing nuclear program as tensions remain high in the wider Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war.

Rafael Mariano Grossi already has warned Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so. He has acknowledged the agency can't guarantee that none of Iran's centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment.

Those challenges now find themselves entangled in attacks between Israel and Iran, with the city of Isfahan apparently coming under Israeli fire in recent weeks despite it being surrounded by sensitive nuclear sites. Grossi is likely to attend an Iranian nuclear conference there while on his two-day trip to Iran.

“Problems will not disappear," Grossi told an International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors' meeting in March. «They will only get worse. So, we need to address this in a serious way.”

Iranian media said Grossi would meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Monday afternoon after this arrival to Tehran. Grossi will travel to Isfahan on Tuesday before heading back to Vienna, where he plans to give an update to journalists there.

Tensions have grown between Iran and the IAEA since then-President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdraw America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Since then, Iran has abandoned all limits the deal put on its program and enriches uranium to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%.

IAEA surveillance cameras have been disrupted, while Iran has barred some of the agency’s most