this is bbc news — the headlines... the us speaker of the house — nancy pelosi — has repeated her warning that congress will veto a us—uk trade agreement if brexit undermines the good friday agreement — which secured peace in northern ireland. joe biden — the democratic presidnetial candidate — has voiced similar concerns. the us states of alabama, florida, and mississippi have declared states of emergency after hurricane sally battered coastal areas. experts at the national hurricane centre said the storm had caused catastrophic and historic flooding to the region. the storm is now moving inland at a walking pace, exacerbating flooding. lamine diack — the former head of athletics‘ govering boby — has been sentenced to four years in prison — two of them suspended — after being convicted of taking bribes to cover up positive drugs tests. he was also found guilty of delaying anti—doping procedures against russian athletes.

that's it for me from tonight. now on bbc news it's hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. what is the point of the world's nuclear watchdog, the international atomic energy agency? its task is to ensure that countries intent on developing nuclear power do not use their programmes as cover for development of weapons of mass destruction. but is it mission impossible? well, my guest is the relatively new iaea chief, rafael grossi. from the continued bitter arguments over iran to north korea and saudi arabia, is the iaea another example of a global agency undermined by geopolitical division? rafael grossi in vienna, welcome to hardtalk.

hello. good to be with you. it's great to have you on the show. let me begin with a question that arises from your relatively recent appointment. how important is it that you are seen to be in the pocket of no nation, that you are seen to be entirely independent? well, i think that's essential. and i suppose it comes with any prominent international position. countries have their own agendas, their own interests,

and they want to make sure that the ones leading these institutions like the iaea are truly independent. in my case, in our case, it's even more so, because unlike other international organisations, we are inspectors. we are the nuclear watchdog. yeah, you absolutely are. so ijust wonder if it was helpful to you when it emerged that the united states had done a little bit of lobbying on your behalf in the runoff election process which the iaea conducted, and you got thejob against a romanian candidate. the us was clearly lobbying on your behalf. was that counterproductive, damaging for you? no, not at all. and i would say it wasn't only the us. it was many other countries. i got a very nice two—thirds of the vote, even more than that. so it wasn't only the united states. it was 2a countries out of 35. so it was a very nice, ample win.

but you need, obviously, the finances, the hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run your budget. and i guess it was very good news for you when it became clear the us was going to continue its full funding of the iaea. we've seen it cut funding and indeed withdraw from other agencies, like the who. so you need to stay on side with the americans, don't you? you need to stay onside with everybody. let me tell you something. you know, in terms of the...of the funding, the issue of funding international organisations has been a subject of dispute, not only now, there have been waves, times, moments where countries were reassessing how they dealt with different international organisations. in the case of the iaea, because of its indispensable role that it plays, we have always had a lot of support, not only from the united states, many other countries. a42 nuclear reactors. a lot of nuclear material out

there, and somebody has to check that this nuclear material, as you said in your introduction, it does not go in the wrong direction. the reason i'm asking all these questions about your independence, your relationship with the united states, is that it was very notable early in the new year, this year when you took over, it did seem there was a ratcheting up of the pressure on tehran and a determination to use information that had been leaked, it seems, from israeli sources to suggest to the iranians that if they didn't become much, much more transparent about what was going on in some of their facilities and plans, you were going to get very tough with them. would you say that you brought a new attitude to the leadership of the iaea when it came to iran?

i did bring a new attitude in general, but i would say when it comes to this, one has to bear in mind that, as the beatles would say, the iran issue is a long and winding road. we've known ups and downs and it's a story that goes at least 20 years back in its present configuration. so it's normal that we had bad moments where there were disagreements. and actually, this year we went through a difficult patch, so to speak. and i was in tehran a couple of weeks ago and was able to solve this issue. so i would say there are moments, different snapshots. at the moment, we are working well. you refer to this trip to iran that you undertook in august. i'm absolutely fascinated by this trip because, as you say, before the trip there was a degree of tension in your relationship with the iranian government, but after you issued a joint statement in tehran, it seems there was an outbreak of goodwill on all sides. and if i'm not wrong, you now say that you believe

the iranians are acting in good faith with all of your inspection programmes. have i got that right? let me say, i suppose you get it right in general. i think the non—proliferation effort is a constant effort. you're never there. you have to always check and you always prove that everything is ok. trust but verify, as they said. so what happened this year is that i asked iran to let us, let our inspectors access a couple of places. they didn't want to, so that led us to an impasse of sorts, which wasn't solved. and i think people were concerned that this would add up to other conflictual situations and debates around iran. therefore, you know, it was important to solve this issue. i thought it was important to talk to them directly. they were kind enough in receiving us. i spoke to president rouhani, to the foreign minister

zarif and others there. and we were able together to come to an agreement. yeah, well, if i may say so, mr grossi, the iranians seemed thrilled by it. afterwards, president rouhani said that his relations with you and the iaea were, quote, "very good". so i just want to get to the heart of what you achieved, because there was a lot of discussion about this so—called abadeh nuclear weapons development site. now, revelations about this site had emerged after the israeli intelligence services got hold of a whole bunch of secret iranian files and documents. yeah... i want to be clear about this. did your...? since your meeting with rouhani, have your people been to this abadeh site? our people have been able to re—establish

their inspection activities. one place where we visit, i don't get into the specifics of the place because this is confidential information, but we were able to go to one and we are going to a second one in a few days. but let me say that in terms of what we achieved, it was important. but it's not the end of the story. and i would like to, in order not to aggrandise what we achieved, what we achieved was to go back to the normal activity that we should have. it was as if, you know, the power had been cut and now the lights are on again and we can see. so this is going to be... it's not like we were in hell before and now we are in paradise. we are working again, let me put it like this. yeah, but i'm going to push you on the detail, because the detail is very important. number one, it seems clear that you have been operating from information provided to you by the israelis. can you confirm that? yes or no? no, i cannot confirm because of the following.

we have lots of information. we have information that we gatherfrom our own inspectors. we have information that countries give us. and we have information that comes from third parties, from other actors. you're being a little bit diplomatic... let me clarify this, because it's important. we never act on the basis of information that we receive, we take at face value and then we go and do stuff. we have a team, a very large team of experts in different technologies and areas. we go through the information. we sift it. we analyse it. we cross it with previous information we had, and only when we believe that something is worthy of further probing or questioning, and this was the case with iran on this matter, we do it. we have tonnes of other information on which we do not act.

well, you are a veteran argentine diplomat and you're proving to be a skilled diplomat in this interview. but the truth is, you did get significant information... i try to. well, you did get significant information from israel. you clearly factored that into your overall assessment. you won't tell me whether abadeh was one of the sites you went to, but it's pretty clear it was. if i'm honest with you, i just want you to tell me, simply, are you now getting a level of cooperation from iran that you have not seen before since thejcpoa, the international agreement, was signed back in 2015? is there now a level of cooperation that you're prepared to recognise as different from tehran? i have the level of cooperation i need now. as you said, i'm relatively new, so i took over in december and already injanuary i had a problem, so i had i have the level of cooperation i need now. as you said, i'm relatively new, so i took over in december

and already injanuary i had a problem, so i had to solve it. now i have a level of cooperation that allow our inspectors to work and we are going to see what we see. see, the big picture here is confusing, and it gets confusing because of the deep geopolitical divisions over iran, because the us and israel have... yes. yeah, the us and israel have one perspective on what's going on and other countries have a very different perspective. so you, and you've told me about your independence, you can perhaps clear up some of these questions for me. so is iran, in your view, closer or further from developing a nuclear weapon today than it was at the beginning of the trump administration in january 2017? the question does not lend itself to a yes ora no, and i explain why. why not? you have different metrics, stephen. you have different metrics. if your metric is how much nuclear material,

in this case enriched uranium, they have, you may draw the conclusion that they have now more material than they had, not at the beginning of the trump administration, but when this administration decided to leave the agreement, which was only in march 2018. since then, iran, by way of retaliation, decided on its side to start degrading its observance. and then that meant that they started to enrich more. but again, to complicate things further, if you compare that with the amounts they had when thejcpoa, which is the acronym, as you know, for this agreement, was signed, they have considerably less. so sometimes these metrics can confound and confuse people. what i can tell you is that we are there to prove and to check that iran does not get a nuclear weapon.

you, as i understand what you've said to me and your wider reporting, are saying that iran now has up to ten times the amount of enriched uranium that were supposed to be permitted under... not quite, not quite. not quite. not quite ten times, a little bit less, but let it be. well, let's not fall out over eight or nine or ten times, the fact is, it has an awful lot more enriched uranium than it's supposed to have, and you're grinning about it, but i'll tell you who's not grinning — the israelis aren't grinning, the donald trump administration is not grinning. and they say that, as a result of this, it is imperative that the european powers pull out of what remains of thejcpoa, that international agreement, and follows suit with the us and impose new, tough sanctions on iran. now, you sit in vienna at the iaea. you presumably have to take some sort of a view on this.

who's right? who's wrong? we are not a party to this treaty, you have to understand. arrangement, agreement or pact. that is precisely why i'm so interested in your answer, because you don't have a dog in this fight. but you can tell me whether the europeans... exactly, this is why we verify. this is why we verify, and when they don't allow us to do ourjob, we say it out loud and we demand the access that is needed to prevent the situation to degrade itself into a point of no return. but my question still remains — when you hear this debate about whether what the iranians have done in the last couple of years represents action and activity which must lead to the wider international community following the us and reimposing tough sanctions, your view, your opinion, is what? 0ur opinion is indispensable

because we tell the world what's going on. no, but substantively, what is your opinion? do you think, given what you see in iran, that the only way of addressing this acquisition of enriched uranium, what the iranians are doing, the only way to address it is to declare thejcpoa dead and reimpose wider tough international sanctions? that's not up for me to say, frankly speaking, and i go back to your first comments. i must be... it's an essential quality that i must preserve — i must be neutral. as i said to the iranians and to the world when i came to this position, i will be firm with them, but fair. so i cannot start taking political sides and saying jcpoa is good or bad, sanctions, yes or no. we provide with a neutral technical assessment that allows, eventually,

those world powers that you are mentioning to come to the right decision. yeah, but you know what, mr grossi? this is fascinating, because it gets to the heart of whether multilateral institutions such as yours can actually function in the 21st—century world, because on the one hand, the americans are now saying that what the iranians are doing is outrageous and that anybody who still backs the international agreement and doesn't impose sanctions is, to quote the secretary of state, mike pompeo, choosing to side with the ayatollahs. that's the american position. and on the other hand, you've got the chinese and the russians who are saying, "absolutely no way, "we won't countenance the reimposition of sanctions". and if the iaea dares to suggest that there are problems with iran that suggest the americans are right, then they will withdraw their support from you. so you're caught in the middle, you're in a desperate squeeze. i don't think so. yeah, i'm caught between

a rock and a hard place, but this comes with myjob. and what we need to do is to continue to provide the exact snapshot of what is going on. and this is the foundation of any decision. people will know, the international community will know when they are not observing their commitments or when they are not allowing the iaea to work and to operate. then there are political persuasions and opinions. you have the democrats, you have the republicans, you have the europeans. everybody comes to me and say what they want. myjob is to be the nuclear watchdog, not more, but not less. but the problem is, all sides attempted to undermine your credibility and therefore, frankly... well, that will always happen. of course, that will always happen. you know, sometimes... let's take this year. this year is very nice because it provides

you with a scientific example of what happens. at the beginning of the year, when i was not getting the access to these locations and i was reporting to the iaea what was going on, i was being described as a sheriff and many other things. so i was tough. now i have an agreement, and you yourself are telling me, "rouhani is saying "that you have the best relation that could ever be." so, you know, i'm used to this. i think it's only normal. and in a way, in a paradoxical way, it's a good indication that we are doing just what we need to do. all right. let's move on from iran, because you've got other big problems in your in—tray. let's talk, very briefly, north korea. now, you don't have people in north korea. they were kicked out quite a few years ago. that's a shame. but donald trump has pursued this diplomatic process with the north koreans, apparently believing that, ultimately, it can lead to the denuclearisation, in weapons terms, of north korea. do you believe that?

because many people think that's pie in the sky. well, you know, with north korea, we've known before, as with iran, it's a long process. we had successes. we had failures. we, i mean the iaea, the international community, the inspectors, we were kicked out from the dprk back in 2009. go figure. 11 years without an international presence there. we have some idea of what is going on. what is clear is that we will only be able to return there and start inspecting once some form of political understanding is there. there were some in the past, which failed. and the latest is the one that the united states and north korea, bilaterally, have been trying to attempt. from what i know from secretary pompeo and the us government, this is a process that continues. i'm hopeful.

i believe that it has to succeed. and when it does, we'll be ready to go back, and to go back to a more different and more complicated, i would say, dprk, because in the past, the activity was quite limited. now they are a nuclear power state. well, they most certainly are, and just to be very clear, ijust need a very brief answer on this. your satellite imaging and everything else you do from outside of the country suggests to you that they are still determinedly pursuing their weapons programme, trying to develop more sophisticated weapons, miniaturise them, everything else. yes. right. well, thanks for that. now, very quickly, one other specific country, saudi arabia. how worried are you by the saudi investment in enlarging their nuclear programme and now seeking out and using the help of china in a very big way? is that worrying you? because some people think that could be very alarming. well, yeah, there's been some

speculation in the press. the reality is — and yet again, we tell things as they are and not on the basis of speculation — the reality is that the kingdom of saudi arabia has very limited nuclear activity, very limited. they have some research activities. they have now bought a low—power research reactor, which is very small. they don't even have it yet. and there have been, and i suppose you are referring to that, there have been some press articles indicating that they might have some cooperation with other countries on uranium mining. we don't have any concrete indication of that. we are in conversation with saudi arabia to make sure that when they upgrade their nuclear programme — which is, as i said, embryonic — we will be ramping up our safeguard

activities there. so i'm not particularly worried, but i'm following actively. interesting. a final thought. your big... well, one of your big ideas when you took over the iaea seems to me to have been to stress to the world that you want to see much more expansion and development of civil nuclear power, because you think it's part of the decarbonisation climate change solution. it is. well, you say it so confidently, but how can you say that when all of the stuff we've discussed today suggests that there is such a very difficult grey area where countries expand their nuclear programmes... ? not at all. remember... not only does the world run the risk... hang on, not only is there probably a danger to nuclear proliferation in the long run, but it's also a safety issue, because we all know what happened at fukushima. it's also a cost issue, because nuclear is extraordinarily expensive in capital terms.

and here you are telling the world that we have to ramp up civil nuclear production. no, no, no. all i'm saying is that nuclear has a place at the table. it is clear that for many countries, 31 of them, including the united kingdom and many others, have in their mix nuclear power. and it is clear that we have a huge challenge in terms of climate change. so to say that a source of energy which is basically clean, which is saving us from two gigatons per year of emissions, does not have a place in the successful mix to decarbonise the economy is simply technically incorrect. then countries can decide whether they go for it or not. and the iaea is there to make sure that this nuclear material, which is used to generate electricity, to cure people, for the benefit of the many, is going to be done in the right way.

all right. rafael grossi, it's been fascinating talking to you. thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you very much. it's been a pleasure. hello there. it will be a notably fresher start to the day, particularly across the southern half of the uk because the transition was taking place further north yesterday. but there will still be plenty of dry weather on offer, some good spells of sunshine will break for the cloud and make it feel pleasantly warm. we have seen the transition as we come behind this cold front through yesterday and overnight to slightly fresher air back to where we

should be for the time of year. quite a brisk easterly wind blowing in the south. always a little bit more cloud close to the north of scotland with this weather front, and there could be some patchy fog elsewhere first thing, the first couple of hours after dawn there could be some dense patches, but then it clears the way. as should the low cloud near the north sea coast, and the misty low cloud we have had in southern and western areas for the last couple of days. the exception really to seeing that sunshine for most is the north and east of scotland. and with the return of the sunshine elsewhere in scotland and northern england i think it will feel warmer than it did yesterday, but the 27 we had in the south not being repeated. more like 21, 22 which is where we should be for this time of year. and so under the clearest skies again through the coming night it's going to turn quite cool, and yes again the exception being northern scotland where we have those weather fronts close by. down into single figures quite widely in the countryside setting us up for another date with perhaps some patchy mist and fog again first thing. brisk wind in the south, but otherwise some good spells of sunshine. and even north as that weather front weekends at times it will be bright.

19 to 21 around about average for this time of year. and we keep that high—pressure close by into the weekend particularly in the north. but this low pressure in the bay of biscay is giving us a little bit of a headache as it comes northwards it is likely to tighten the isobars. the winds will strengthen again, and possibly it's going to bring some showers close to southern parts of england in particular. so a keen breeze coming off the north sea which will make it feel cooler. some low cloud as well plagueing the north sea coast. so here temperatures will be as high, but 19 to 22 further west. and then just the possibility of some showers, the question mark is how far north they will come into the southern half of the uk. they are still meandering around the area of low pressure into sunday as well. with that breeze coming off the north sea also risk a little bit more cloud around here, but still a good deal of dry and settled weather with high pressure largely in charge for the north. as ever, there is more on the website.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm mike embley. fresh warnings for the uk from senior us politicians — jeopardise the good friday agreement — and there will be no trade deal. hurricane sally makes landfall in america — causing catastrophic flooding, with winds exceeding 160km/h. the former head of world athletics‘ governing body, lamine diack, is jailed for covering up evidence of russian doping. in south america, the amazon region is once again suffering more devastating fires as the brazilian government