Edward Luttwak
One person is responsible for Israel’s attack on Iran: Rafael Mariano Grossi, the Argentine director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, since December 2019.
His predecessors, and especially Mohamed El Baradei, in charge 1997-2009 when it first became clear that Iran’s nuclear efforts were aimed at weapons and not energy, were extremely polite international diplomats,
who presented the IAEA’s reports on Iran in very restrained language — as if they were describing purely academic research.
Grossi’s reports were entirely different. He was a diplomat until he arrived at IAEA, but from the start of his career in the Argentine foreign service, he had immersed himself in technological questions, acquiring a great deal of engineering expertise over the years.
From the start, Grossi’s investigations in Iran focused on the country’s vast effort to “enrich” uranium, to increase the proportion of radioactive U-235. Some energy reactors can operate with zero enrichment by using heavy water moderators, while others work very well with 3-4% enrichment, or a maximum of 5% of U-235.
Because the infrastructure needed to enrich uranium is extremely expensive, only a handful of the 31 countries that operate nuclear reactors have ever tried it themselves. Most simply buy it from the cheapest source, often Russia as well France, the UK and Kazakhstan.
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