Rafael Grossi, - Director General, IAEA - BBC HARDtalk

welcome to hard talk i'm stephen sacker what is the point of the world's nuclear watchdog the international atomic energy agency its task is to ensure that countries intent on developing nuclear power do not use their programs as cover for development of weapons of mass destruction but is it mission impossible well my guest is the relatively new iaea chief raphael grossi from the continued bitter arguments over iran to north korea and saudi arabia is the iaea another example of a global agency undermined by geopolitical division [Music] rafael grossi in vienna welcome to hard talk hello good to be with you it's great to have you on the show let me begin with a question that arises from your relatively recent appointment how important is it that you are seen to be in the pocket of no nation that you are seen to be entirely independent well i think that's essential and i suppose it comes with any prominent international position countries have their own agendas their own interests and they want to make sure that the ones leading these institutions like the iaea are truly independent in my case in our case is even more so because unlike other international organizations we are inspectors we are the nuclear watchdog yeah you absolutely are so i just wonder if it was helpful to you when it emerged that the united states had done a little bit of lobbying on your behalf in the runoff uh electoral election process uh which the iaea conducted and you got the job against a romanian candidate the ua was clearly lobby the us rather was clearly lobbying on your behalf was that counterproductive damaging for you no not at all and i would say it wasn't only the u.s it was many other countries i got a very nice two-thirds of the vote even more than that so it wasn't only the united states it was 24 countries out of 35 so it was a very nice ample win but you need uh obviously the the finances the hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run your budget and i guess it was very good news for you when it became clear the us was going to continue its full funding of the iaea we've seen it cut funding and indeed withdraw from other agencies like the who so you need to stay on side with the americans don't you you need to stay on site with everybody and let me tell you something you know in terms of the uh of the funding the issue of funding international organizations has been a subject of dispute not only now there have been waves where times moments where countries were reassessing how they dealt with with different international organizations in the case of the iaea because of its indispensable role that it plays we have always had a lot of support not only from the united states many other countries 440 nuclear reactors a lot of nuclear material out there and somebody has to check that this nuclear material as you said in your introduction is does not go in the wrong direction the reason i'm asking all these questions about your independence your relationship with the united states is that it was very notable in early in the new year this year when you took over uh it did seem there was a ratcheting up of the pressure on tehran and the determination to use information that had been leaked it seems from israeli sources to suggest to the iranians that if they didn't become much much more transparent about what was going on in some of their facilities and plans you were going to get very tough with them would you say that you brought a new attitude to the leadership of the iaea when it came to iran i did bring a new attitude in general but i would say when it comes to to this uh one has to bear in mind that as as the beatles would say the iran issue is a long and winding road we've been we've known ups and downs and it's a story that goes at least 20 years back uh in its present configuration so it's normal that we had uh bad moments where there were moments there were there disagreements and actually this year we went through a difficult patch so to speak and i was in tehran a couple of weeks ago and was able to to solve these issues so i would say there are moments different snapshots at the moment we are working well well you refer to this trip to iran that you undertook in august i'm absolutely fascinated by this trip because as you say before the trip there was a degree of tension in your relationship with the iranian government but after you issued a joint statement in tehran it seems there was a an outbreak of goodwill on all sides and if i'm not wrong you now say that you believe the iranians are acting in good faith with all of your inspection programs have i got that right let me let me say i i suppose you yeah you get it right in general i think the the non-proliferation effort is a constant effort you're never there you have to always check and you always prove that everything is okay trust but verify as they said so what what happened this year is that i asked iran to let us let our inspectors access a couple of places they didn't want to so that led us to an impasse or of sorts which wasn't solved and i think people were concerned that this would add up to other conflictual situations and debates around iran therefore you know it was important to solve this issue i thought it was important to talk to them directly they were kind enough in receiving us i i spoke to president rouhani to the foreign minister zarif and others there and and and we were able together to come to an agreement yeah well that thank to say so uh mr grocery the iranians seem thrilled by it afterwards president rouhani said that his relations with you and the iaea were quote very good so i just want to get to the heart of what you achieved because there was a lot of discussion about this so-called abadi nuclear weapons development site now revelations about this site had emerged after the israeli intelligence services got hold of a whole bunch of secret iranian files and documents yeah i want to be clear about this did your since your meeting with rouhani have your people been to this abadi site our people have been able to re-establish their inspection activities one place we we visit i don't get into the specifics of the place because this is a confidential information but we were able to go to one and we are going to a second one uh in a few days but let me say that in terms of what what we achieved it was important but it it's it's not the end of the story uh and i would like to in order not to aggrandize what we what we achieved what we achieved was to go back to the normal activity that we should have we were able it was as if the you know the power had been cut and now the lights are on again and we can see so this is going to be it's not like we were in hell now before and now we're in paradise we are working again let me put it like this yeah but i'm i'm going to push you on the detail because the detail is very important number one it seems clear that you have been operating from information provided to you by the israelis can you confirm that yes or no no i cannot confirm because of the following we have lots of information we have information that we gather from our own inspectors we have information that countries give us and we have con we have information that comes from third parties from other other actors because it's important we never act on the basis of information that we that we receive we take at face value and then we go and do stuff yeah we have a a a a a team a very large team of experts in different technologies and areas we go through the information we shift it we analyze it we cross it with previous information we had and only when we believe that something is worthy of further probing or questioning and this was the case uh with with iran on this on this matter we do it right we have tons of other information on which we do not act well you you are a veteran argentine diplomat and you're proving to be a skilled diplomat in this interview but the truth is you did get significant information yeah well you did get significant information from israel you clearly factored that into your overall assessment you won't tell me whether abadi was one of the sites you went to but it's cl pretty clear it was if i'm honest with you i just want you to tell me simply are you now getting a level of cooperation from iran that you have not seen before since the jcpo the international agreement uh was signed back in 2015. is there now a level of cooperation that you're prepared to recognize as different from tehran i have the level of cooperation i need now as you said i'm relatively new so i took over in december and already in january i had i had a problem so i had to solve it now i have a level of cooperation that allow our inspectors to work and we are going to see what we see see the big picture here is confusing and it gets confusing because of the deep geopolitical divisions over iran because the u.s and israel have yeah the us and israel have one perspective on what's going on and other countries have a very different perspective so you and you've told me about your independence you can perhaps clear up some of these questions for me so is iran in your view closer or further from developing a nuclear weapon today than it was at the beginning of the trump administration in january 2017 the question does not lend itself to a yes or no and i explain why not you have different metrics stephen you have different metrics if your metric is how much nuclear material in this case enriched uranium they have you may draw the conclusion that they have now more material than they had not at the beginning of the trump's administration but when this administration decided to leave the agreement which was only in march 2018. since then iran by way of retaliation decided on its side to start degrading its observance and then that meant that they started to enrich more but again to complicate things further if you compare that with the amounts they had when the jcpoa which is the acronym as you know for this agreement was signed they have considerably less so sometimes this metrics can confound and confuse people what i can tell you is that we are there to um prove and to uh check that iran does not get a nuclear weapon you as i understand what you've said to me and your wider reporting are saying that iran now has up to 10 times the amount of enriched uranium that we're supposed to be permitted underneath not quite not quite not quite not quite ten times a little bit less but let's let's not let's not fall out over eight or nine or ten times the fact is it has an awful lot more enriched uranium than it's supposed to have and you're grinning about it but i'll tell you who's not grinning the israelis aren't grinning the donald trump administration is not grinning and they say that as a result of this it is imperative that the european powers pull out of what remains of the jcpo that international agreement and follow with the us and impose new tough sanctions on iran now you sit in vienna at the iaea you presumably have to take some sort of a view on this who's right who's wrong we are not a party to this treaty you have to understand we are not a party to this arrangement agreement or pact that is why i'm so interested in your answer because you don't have a dog in this fight but you can tell me whether the euro exactly this is why we verify this is why we verify and when they don't allow us to do our job we say it out loud and we demand the access that is needed to prevent the situation to degrade itself into a point of no return but my question still remains when you hear this debate about whether what the iranians have done in the last couple of years represents action and activity which must lead to the wider international community following the us and reimposing tough sanctions your view your opinion is what our opinion is indispensable because we tell the world what's going on substantively what is your opinion do you think given what you see in iran that the only way of addressing this acquisition of enriched uranium what the iranians are doing the only way to address it is to declare the jcpoa dead and re-impose wider tough international sanctions that's not up for me to say frankly speaking and and i go back to your first comments i am must be it's an essential quality that i must preserve i must be neutral as i said to the iranians and to the world when i came to this position i will be firm with them but fair so i cannot start taking political sides and saying jcpoa is good or bad sanctions yes or no we provide with the neutral technical assessment that allows eventually those world powers that you are mentioning to come to the right decision yeah but you know what mr grossly this is fascinating because it gets to the heart of whether multilateral uh institutions such as yours can actually function in the 21st century world because on the one hand the americans are now saying that what is what the iranians are doing is outrageous and that anybody who still backs the international agreement and doesn't impose sanctions is to quote the state secretary of state mike pompeo choosing to side with the ayatollahs that's the american position and on the other hand you've got the chinese and the russians who are saying absolutely no way we won't countenance the reimposition of sanctions and if the iaea dares to suggest that there are problems with iran that suggest the americans are right then they will withdraw their support from you so you're caught in the middle you're in a desperate squeeze i'm caught between a rock and a hard dress but this comes with my job and what we need to do is to continue to provide the exact the exact snapshot of what is going on and this is the foundation of any any decision people will know the international community will know when they are not observing uh their uh commitments or when they are not allowing the iaea to work and to operate then there are political persuasions and opinions you have the the democrats you have the republicans you have the europeans everybody comes to me and say what they want my job is to be the nuclear watchdog not more but not less but the problem is all sides are tempted to undermine your credibility and therefore frankly nobody can always happen of course that will always happen you know sometimes you let's take this here and this year is very nice because it provides you with a scientific example of what happens in the beginning of the year when i was not getting the access to to these locations and i was reporting to to the iaea what was going on i was being described as a sheriff and many other things so i was i was tough now i have an agreement and you yourself are telling me rouhani is saying that you have the best relation that could ever be so you know i'm i am i'm used to this i think it's it's only normal and in a way in a paradoxical way it's a good indication that we are doing just what we need to do all right let's move on from iran because you've got other big problems in your entry let's talk very briefly north korea now you don't have people in north korea they were kicked out quite a few years ago that's a shame yes well but donald trump has pursued this diplomatic process with the north koreans apparently believing that ultimately it can lead to the denuclearization in weapons terms of north korea do you believe that because many people think that's pie in the sky well you know with north korea we've known before as as with with iran it's a long process we we had successes we had failures we i mean the iaea the international community the inspectors we were kicked out of from from the dprk back in 2009 cop figure 11 years without an international presence there we have some idea of what is going on what is clear is that we will only be able to return there and start inspecting once some form of a political understanding is there there were some in the past which failed and the the latest is the one that the united states and north korea bilaterally have been trying to attempt for what i know uh from from secretary pompeo and the u.s government this is a process that continues i'm hopeful i i believe that it has to succeed and when it does we'll be ready to go back and to go back to a more different uh and more complicated i would say dprk because we're asking but just just to be productivity was quite limited now they are a nuclear power station well they most certainly are and just to be very clear very brief answer on this your satellite imaging and everything else you do from outside of the country suggest to you that they are still determinedly pursuing their weapons program trying to develop more sophisticated weapons miniaturize them everything else yes right well thanks for that now very quickly one other specific country saudi arabia how worried are you by the saudi investment in enlarging their nuclear program and now seeking out and using the help of china in a very big way is that worrying you because some people think that could be very alarming well yeah there's been some speculation in the press the reality is and yet again we tell things as they are and not on the basis of speculation the reality is that the kingdom of saudi arabia has very limited nuclear activity very limited they have some research activities they have now bought a low power research reactor which is very small they don't even have it yet and there have been and i suppose you uh are referring to that there have been some uh press uh um articles uh indicating that they they might have some uh cooperation with other countries on uh on uranium mining we don't have any any any concrete indication of that we are in conversation with saudi arabia to make sure that when they upgrade their nuclear program which is as i said embryonic we will be ramping up our safeguards activities there so i'm not particularly worried but i'm following actively interesting a final thought your bigger one of your big ideas when you took over the iaea seems to me to have been to stress to the world that you want to see much more uh expansion and development of civil nuclear power because you think it's part of the decarbonization climate change solution well you say it is so confidently but how can you say that when all of the stuff we've discussed today suggests that there is such a very difficult grey area where countries expand their nuclear programs and they they run not only does the world run the risk of hang on just not only is it probably a danger to nuclear proliferation in the long run but it's also a safety issue because we all know what happened at fukushima it's also a cost issue because nuclear is extraordinarily expensive in capital terms and here you are telling the world that we have to ramp up civil nuclear production no no no no all i'm saying all i'm saying is that nuclear has a place at the table it is clear that for many countries 31 of them including the united kingdom and many others have in their mix nuclear power and it is clear that we have a huge challenge in terms of climate change so to say that a source of energy which is basically clean which is saving us from two gigatons per year of uh emissions does not have a place in the successful mix to decarbonize the economy is simply technically incorrect then countries can decide whether they go for it or not and the iaea is there to make sure that this nuclear material which is used to generate electricity to cure people for the benefit of of the many is going to be done in the right in the right way all right raphael grossi it's been fascinating talking to you thank you very much for joining me on hard talk thank you very much it's been a pleasure [Music] [Music] you

Channel: BBC HARDtalk

Views: 73,855

Keywords: BBC Hardtalk, Stephen Sackur, politics, interview BBC, Rafael Grossi, IAEA, Nuclear, Atomic

Id: j6_eD1Pq_Z4

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020