Any Trump deal with Iran must tackle nuclear watchdog’s blind spots

Reuters:

UN inspectors monitoring Iran’s Fordow nuclear site confronted a major gap in their knowledge last year as they watched trucks carrying advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges roll into the facility dug into a mountain south of Tehran.

While Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that hundreds of extra IR-6 centrifuges would be installed at Fordow, the inspectors had no idea where the sophisticated machines had come from, an official familiar with the UN monitoring work told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The episode encapsulated how the UN nuclear watchdog has lost track of some critical elements of Iran’s nuclear activities since US President Donald Trump ditched a 2015 deal that imposed strict restrictions and close IAEA supervision.

Key blind spots include not knowing how many centrifuges Iran possesses or where the machines and their parts are produced and stored, quarterly IAEA reports show.