The world should be careful to ensure the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program does not become like North Korea, which expelled U.N. inspectors before testing nuclear weapons, U.N. atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said Monday.
"We have to deploy every effort to prevent this problem, this current debate on what is happening and what can be done in Iran [from] becoming a failure on the part of the international community to prevent a country that has capabilities which could potentially lead to the development of nuclear weapons from doing it," he told a U.S. State Department conference.
"We saw the failure of this type in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea," Grossi said.
The IAEA was responsible for verifying Iran's compliance with the defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal, under which Tehran curbed its nuclear program in return for the easing of U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions.
Attempts to revive that deal, abandoned by then-U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018, collapsed about a year ago, and Washington has been searching for a new way to get Tehran to restrain its program.
