Iran temporarily closes nuclear facilities in wake of missile, drone attack on Israel, says IAEA chief

The chief of the UN’s atomic watchdog said on Monday that Iran has temporarily halted its nuclear facilities due to “security considerations” following its major missile and drone strike on Israel over the weekend.

Rafael Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was asked by reporters during a UN Security Council meeting if he was worried that Israel may attack an Iranian nuclear plant in retribution for the attack.

“We are always concerned about this possibility. What I can tell you is that our inspectors in Iran were informed by the Iranian government that yesterday (Sunday), all the nuclear facilities that we are inspecting every day would remain closed on security considerations,” he said.

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The facilities were to reopen on Monday, Grossi said, but inspectors would not return until the following day.

“I decided to not let the inspectors return until we see that the situation is completely calm,” he added, while calling for “extreme restraint”.

Iran launched almost 300 drones and missiles at Israel overnight on Saturday and Sunday in response for an air assault on a consulate facility in Damascus that killed seven Revolutionary Guards members, two of whom were generals.

Israel and its allies shot down the great bulk of the weaponry, and the strike did relatively minimal damage, but predictions of an Israeli retaliation have fueled fears of a full-fledged regional conflict.

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Israel has already undertaken military operations against regional nuclear installations.

Despite resistance from Washington, it destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak in 1981. In 2018, it admits to launching a top-secret air strike on a Syrian reactor 11 years ago.

Israel is also accused by Tehran of having assassinated two Iranian nuclear physicists in 2010, and of having kidnapped another the previous year.

Also in 2010, a sophisticated cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus, attributed by Tehran to Israel and the United States, led to a series of breakdowns in Iranian centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

Israel accuses Iran of wanting to acquire an atomic bomb, something Tehran denies.