Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on 23 June that Iran had "fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections"1. Within hours, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said no meeting with Rafael Grossi had taken place, no inspection protocol existed and no plan was in place, advancing his 23 June refusal of access to war-damaged sites2. The president dismissed the denial as unimportant.
Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body that verifies states' nuclear obligations, occupied the gap between the two. He said the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) "explicitly states" Iran's nuclear work will be supervised by the agency and that inspection "is going to happen"3. He named no date.
Inspectors have resumed work at the intact Bushehr reactor, but the bombed sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan remain closed, and the agency still cannot verify the 440.9 kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium, or highly enriched uranium (HEU), it lost track of in February. the MOU required that stockpile destroyed under IAEA supervision, a demand Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has already called excessive. With no date, the inspection promise becomes a claim each side relays to its own audience while the war's central question stays open.
