credibility

President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.

Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.

It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.

“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”

Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why

None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”

“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”

NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”

“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.

Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.

More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.

Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.

White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’

The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”

The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.

“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”

In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”

The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”

In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.

The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.

In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.

In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.

Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

Recently, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that US support for “everything that the Israeli government is doing” limits the EU’s leverage to change the situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

Subsequently, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, proposed sanctions to Israeli ministers and partial suspension of Israel trade deal. On Wednesday, the EU Commission’s review discovered – after 21 months of mass atrocities in Gaza and violent pogroms in the West Bank – that actions taken by the Israeli government in the Palestinian-occupied territories represent a ‘breach of essential elements relating to respect for human rights and democratic principles,’ which permits the EU to suspend the agreement unilaterally.

Recently, these sentiments were reinforced with the recognition of the state of Palestine by U.S. allies – the UK, Canada and Australia – and more recently by France. 

Observers of Brussels declared that the EU had become tough on genocide. In reality, it was a last-minute effort by the two EU leaders to fuse rising outrage against EU’s Gaza policies and charges they were complicit in Israel’s atrocities.

How Kallas emboldened Israel in Gaza

Addressing the annual EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) conference in Brussels, Kajas said that US backing of Israel undermines EU leverage to stop the “Gaza war.” Yet, the United States has supported Israel for more than half a century.

“We are struggling because 27 member states have different positions,” on the issue, Kallas explained. “Europe can only use full force when it acts together.” In this way, accessorial complicity is first deflected to Washington and then attributed to the absence of European unity, which Kallas has long called for, to confront Russia. In other words, the EU Gaza apology was a thinly-veiled effort for a plea to unity Kallas hoped to turn against Russia in Ukraine.

When asked about “double-standard” accusations towards the bloc on its Gaza policy, Kallas said it is not true that the EU is inactive on Gaza. Yet, previously she had opposed intervention in Gaza. In mid-July, Kallas and the foreign ministers of the EU member states chose not to take any action against Israel over alleged war crimes in the Gaza war and settler violence in the West Bank.

The then-proposed sanctions against Israel would have included suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, suspending visa-free travel, and blocking imports from Israeli settlements. This decision emboldened the Netanyahu cabinet, which saw the EU’s decision not to impose sanctions on Israel as a diplomatic victory. It also led UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to conclude that EU officials like Kallas were complicit in Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, accounting for a third of Israel’s total trade in goods with the world in 2024, whereas Israel is only the EU’s 31^st largest trading partner. Consequently, the EU could easily have sanctioned Israeli trade right after the first genocidal atrocities in late 2023, yet it chose not to. Why?

How von der Leyen undermined EU’s credibility

Von der Leyen has a track-record of intimate relations with Israel. It was a source of controversy already before the Gaza catastrophe. On the 75^th anniversary of Israel’s independence, half a year before October 7, 2023, she referred to Israel as a “vibrant democracy” in the Middle East that made “the desert bloom.” These remarks were criticized as racist by the foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority because they erased the history of Palestinians in what is today Israel.

After the Hamas offensive, von der Leyen was criticized by EU lawmakers and diplomats for supporting Israel and not calling for a ceasefire. A week after October 7, she rushed to visit Israel to express solidarity, even as the Netanyahu cabinet spoke openly on the coming destruction of Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Then-EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell criticized her for the pro-Israeli stance which “had a high geopolitical cost for Europe.”

The visit and the rhetoric also sparked furor among 841 EU staff who signed a letter to von der Leyen criticizing her stance on the conflict. In their view, the commission was giving “a free hand to the acceleration and the legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip” and warned that the EU was “losing all credibility and the position as a fair, equitable and humanist broker.”

In reality, that credibility has eroded for years. By the early 2020s, more than 800 European financial institutions, including Europe’s most luminous financial giants, had financial relationships with over 50 businesses that were actively involved with Israeli settlements.

Why the belated moral outrage

Recently, the European Commission presented a proposal for tougher measures against Israel to the European Union, which featured suspending parts of the EU-Israel trade agreement and sanctioning Israeli far-right ministers and some West Bank settlers, along with Hamas leadership. These measures are very much in line with the EC chief’s previous warning. But why do they come only now – after 21 months of genocidal atrocities, the obliteration of Gaza and a quarter of a million killed or injured Palestinians?

A qualified majority vote among EU governments will still be required to pass the measures, with the support of at least 15 of the 27 EU members representing two-thirds of the EU population.

Moreover, von der Leyden’s Gaza criticism was carefully calculated to limit the scope of possible sanctions. “Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war,” she said. “For the sake of the children, for the sake of humanity – this must stop.”

Yet, Israel’s weaponized famines did not start few weeks ago. They date from the 2006 Palestine democratic election, which was won by Hamas in both Gaza and the West Bank. It led to Israel’s blockade, which was supported by the U.S. and the EU, and the Israeli-manufactured famine, designed to starve Gaza. The blockade paved the way to almost two decades of impoverishment, hunger, unemployment and thus to October 7, 2023. But it did not trigger condemnations by von der Leyden or the then-EU leaders.

Worse, the world witnessed the first starving victims in Gaza already in spring 2024. Yet, neither von Der Leyden nor other European leaders demanded the end to Israel’s actions at the time. And by the turn of 2023/24, still another famine way ensued, with similar silence in Brussels. It was only the third wave of famine in mid-2025 that changed their views. But why?

“What is happening in Gaza,” von der Leyden said, “has shaken the conscience of the world… These images are simply catastrophic.” That was the difference: not the realities of weaponized famines, which the world had witnessed for almost two decades in Gaza, but the images.

As those photos of starved bodies, particularly of children and babies, could no longer be halted or sidelined in international media, EU politicians, pushed by their constituencies, were compelled to act.

What European leaders chose not to do

It was when the European leaders were charged for accessorial complicity that von der Leyden and Kallas reacted. What the former proposed was “a package of measures” against Israel over its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. Or as she put it – and let’s italicize the key terms – “We will propose sanctions on the extremist ministers and on violent settlers. And we will also propose a partial suspension of the Association Agreement on trade-related matters.”

The EU would not use its full arsenal to change Israel’s conduct. It would only go after a few ministers of the Netanyahu cabinet, but not the cabinet itself, even though most of its members had been complicit to the Gaza catastrophe with some supporting even harsher measures, including “nuking” Gaza.

Similarly, the EU would only go after a few token settlers, not the illegal settlements that now house up to 750,000 Jewish settlers. Nor would the EU go after hardline Israeli politicians and civil administrators who have been preparing the incorporation of the West Bank into the pre-1967 Israel since their electoral triumph in late 2022.

The ties between Israel and the United States have expanded from hedging and strategic partnership into a virtual symbiosis. Since 1950, Israel has received more than $120 billion in U.S. aid, most of it in military aid; after October 7, this aid has soared up to $23 billion. But Washington is not Israel’s only ally. In the past half a decade, only three countries—the US (66% of Israel’s total arms imports), Germany (33%) and Italy (1%) —have supplied most of Israel’s arms.

Several other European countries have supplied vital military components, ammunition and services, including the UK, France and Spain. Meanwhile, small EU members like the tiny Finland are increasingly reliant on Israeli arms imports.

The elevated arms transfers reflect the contested European shift toward rearmament, at the expense of welfare and social services – despite the soaring challenges of aging demographics and climate change.

Genocide investigation against von der Leyen

Both Washington and Brussels are complicit to mass atrocities, due to their arms exports to Israel and financing through military aid, not to mention diplomatic and intelligence support. Article 3 of the Genocide Convention defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention, and these crimes include complicity.

In May 2024, the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI), an NGO with UN consultative status, requested an investigation against the EC president, Ursula von der Leyen, for complicity in war crimes and genocide against Palestinian civilians. Her complicity was attributed to “violations of Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute by her positive actions (military, political, diplomatic support to Israel) and by her failure to take timely action on behalf of the European Commission to help prevent genocide as required by the 1948 Genocide Convention.”

According to Professor William Schabas, perhaps the leading scholar of genocide, ”von der Leyen is clearly reflecting a position taken by many EU-governments, which is one of very unconditional support of Israel, and they’re doing this flying in the face of public information suggesting that Israel is committing terrible crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The issue with too many European leaders is no longer only the crime of complicity, but also the concerted effort to deny that Israel’s crimes and atrocities against Palestinians constitute genocide. Such denials should be seen as a form of “incitement” to hatred and violence, condemned by the Genocide Convention.

Legal efforts to go after genocide complicity entered a new stage recently, when a group of lawyers filed a criminal complaint against German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, key government officials and arms trade executives on Friday. A dozen high-ranking officials of the former and current German government and CEOs of arms manufacturers were accused of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC). “Given the undeniable, genocidal consequences of this support, we seek to hold them accountable,” said Nadija Samour, ELSC’s senior legal officer.

Recently, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez noted that “what we’re now witnessing in Gaza is perhaps one of the darkest episodes of international relations in the 21^st century.”

Tragically, the European leaders share full accessorial complicity in the decimation of Gaza and the genocide of its residents, plus the incorporation of the West Bank – that is, the massive moral collapse that is likely to cast a long, dark shadow over the 21^st century because what has happened in Gaza is likely to be replicated elsewhere, with even more lethal results.

Author’s note: Building on The Obliteration Doctrine, the original commentary was published by Antiwar.com on September 23, 2025.

WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Thursday angrily accused Justice Department prosecutors of trampling on the civil rights of people arrested during President Trump’s law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital.

Judge Zia Faruqui, a former federal prosecutor, said leaders of U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office have tarnished its reputation with how they are handling the deluge of cases. He said Pirro’s office is routinely bringing cases that don’t belong in federal court and needlessly keeping people in jail for days while they evaluate charges.

“It’s not fair to say they’re losing credibility. We’re past that now,” Faruqui said. He later added, “There’s no credibility left.”

The judge lambasted Pirro’s office during a hearing at which he agreed to dismiss the federal case against a man accused of threatening to kill Trump while in police custody. The defendant, Edward Alexander Dana, spent more than a week in jail before a federal grand jury refused to indict him.

It is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to balk at returning an indictment, but it has happened at least seven times in five cases since Trump’s surge started nearly a month ago. Faruqui said it is ironic that an occupying force is at the mercy of the occupants” serving on the grand juries.

Pirro has been critical of Faruqui, one of four magistrates at the district court in Washington. On Thursday, the top federal prosecutor for Washington responded to Faruqui’s latest remarks by saying the judge “has repeatedly indicated his allegiance to those who violate the law and carry illegal guns.”

“This judge took an oath to follow the law, yet he has allowed his politics to consistently cloud his judgment and his requirement to follow the law,” she said in a statement. “America voted for safe communities, law and order, and this judge is the antithesis of that.”

Faruqui said there is no precedent for what is happening at the courthouse over the last few weeks. He said Trump administration officials are frequently touting the arrest figures on social media with seemingly no regard for how the arrests are affecting people’s lives.

“Where are the stats on the people illegally detained?” he asked.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Conor Mulroe said prosecutors from Pirro’s office are working around the clock on the influx of new cases.

“You are busy because you all have created this mess,” he told Mulroe. “I’m not saying it’s your problem. It’s your office’s problem.”

Mulroe was the only representative of Pirro’s office who attended Thursday’s hearing. Faruqui questioned why Pirro or her top deputies “don’t have the dignity to come here” and defend their charging decisions.

“That’s what leaders do,” he said.

The White House says over 1,800 people have been arrested since the operation started Aug. 7. Over 40 cases have been filed in district court, which hears the most serious federal offenses, including assault, gun and drug charges.

Dana was jailed for about a week after his arrest on Aug. 17. A different judge ordered his release on Aug. 25. On Thursday, Pirro’s office opted to drop the federal case against Dana but charge him with misdemeanors, including destruction of property and attempted threats, in D.C. Superior Court.

Dana’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Elizabeth Mullin, said prosecutors should have known that this case didn’t belong in federal court.

“A 15-year-old would know,” she said. “It was obvious from the outset.”

Dana was arrested on suspicion of damaging a light fixture at a restaurant. An officer was driving Dana to a police station when he threatened to kill Trump, according to a Secret Service agent’s affidavit. Dana also told police that he was intoxicated that night. Mullin said Dana’s “hyperbolic rambling” didn’t amount to a criminal threat.

Faruqui ordered prosecutors to file a brief explaining why they didn’t immediately inform him of its charging decisions in Dana’s case. The judge apologized to Dana “on behalf of the court” and suggested that Pirro’s office also owes Dana an apology.

Pirro said in an earlier statement that a grand jury’s refusal to indict somebody for threatening to kill the president “is the essence of a politicized jury.”

“The system here is broken on many levels,” she said. “Instead of the outrage that should be engendered by a specific threat to kill the president, the grand jury in D.C. refuses to even let the judicial process begin. Justice should not depend on politics.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

The firing of a top United States statistics official by President Donald Trump last week has drawn concerns from economists and policymakers regarding the credibility of data in the world’s biggest economy.

Trump’s dismissal of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the release of disappointing employment figures on Friday has raised fears over the integrity of Washington’s economic data, which are relied on by countless businesses and investors in the US and across the world.

The National Association for Business Economics warned that McEntarfer’s “baseless” ouster risked doing “lasting harm to the institutions that support American economic stability”.

“It could open the door to political meddling and certainly will undermine trust in federal statistics that businesses, policymakers and individuals use to make some of their most important decisions,” Erica Groshen, who led the Bureau of Labor Statistics under former President Barack Obama, told Al Jazeera.

If Trump’s dismissal of McEntarfer and other presidential appointees is allowed to stand, Groshen said, he could make a habit of firing any head of a statistical agency or other body that delivers “unwelcome news”.

“Then he is likely to replace them with appointees who prioritise serving his goals over serving the mission of their agencies, ethical standards or scientific integrity,” Groshen said.

Trump, who justified McEntarfer’s removal by claiming without evidence that the latest job figures were “rigged” to make him look bad, said on Sunday that he would announce a new Bureau of Labor Statistics head in three or four days.

‘Global ramifications’

A collapse in trust in official economic data about the US would have ramifications worldwide.

Despite the growing influence of emerging economies such as China and India, the US remains the world’s largest economy by some distance.

The US gross domestic product (GDP) at about $30.3 trillion accounts for more than one-quarter of the global economy. China’s estimated GDP is about two-thirds that amount.

US government data on trade, employment, consumer spending and GDP are considered important signals for the direction of the global economy and are closely followed by businesses and investors from London to Dubai and Tokyo.

Many countries, including democratic states, have faced accusations of fiddling with economic statistics for political reasons, often with serious reputational consequences.

In 2010, the European Commission published a withering report accusing Greece of deliberately falsifying data to conceal the poor state of its public finances.

In 2013, the International Monetary Fund officially censured Argentina for providing what it said was inaccurate data on inflation and economic growth.

‘Economic data manipulation’

Some research suggests that countries run by strong-arm leaders are especially prone to misrepresenting the state of their economies.

A 2024 study published in the European Journal of Political Economy found that economic openness and democracy decreased the likelihood of governments manipulating statistics although there were no observable positive effects from media freedom or the independence of the statistical office.

In a 2022 paper that used satellite imagery of nighttime light as a proxy for economic development, Luis Martinez, a professor at the University of Chicago, estimated that autocratic countries artificially inflated their annual GDP growth by about 35 percent.

“Economic data manipulation is pervasive in history, especially in autocracies and dictatorships to create narratives for the people – typically to embellish standards of living,” Tomasz Michalski, an associate professor of economics at the HEC Paris business school, told Al Jazeera.

“What is rarer, though, is to find such deliberate behaviour in countries that strive to be democracies or are more developed.”

After Trump’s firing of McEntarfer, a career economist who was appointed in 2024 with overwhelming bipartisan support, critics were quick to note parallels to tactics attributed to strongman leaders seeking to bolster public approval for their policies.

“It’s one more step on our rapid descent into banana republic status,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Substack, a subscription-based newsletter platform.

Lawrence Summers, who served as US Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, described the firing as the “stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism”.

Scott Sumner, a professor of economics at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, said Trump’s move made the US “look more like a banana republic” although it remained to be seen whether he would seek to directly manipulate the government’s economic figures.

“It’s actually hard to fool the public, and almost no one was fooled by the Argentina manipulation,” Sumner told Al Jazeera.

“It’s too soon to say whether Trump will try to do the same. Any attempt to do so would likely fail.”

‘The quality of US economic statistics’

The quality of US economic data has been a growing concern for some time due in part to the Trump administration’s freeze on hiring federal employees and staff cuts at numerous agencies.

In March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dissolved two expert committees that advised the government on its economic statistics, prompting concern among some economists.

In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that it had stopped collecting price-related data in three US cities – Buffalo, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Provo, Utah – due to limitations in “current resources”.

But even before Trump’s return to the White House in January, declining response rates to surveys among the public in recent years had made the collection of data increasingly difficult, raising concerns about accuracy.

In a poll published by the Reuters news agency last month, 89 of 100 policy experts surveyed said they had at least some concerns about the quality of US economic statistics.

“Some data is just unreliable because people stopped responding to surveys or the responses became so biased given the nonhomogeneous response rates,” said Michalski, the HEC Paris associate professor.

“There are no easy remedies often for improving data collection given that many people are not using landlines, are unreachable or provide careless answers to investigators,” he said.

Even with sound methodology, data are always at risk of manipulation once politicians get involved, Michalski added.

“Even with correct numbers, it is possible to spin a story about inflation or GDP growth by changing the base years or selecting some specific periods to weave narratives,” he said.

“The incentives to manipulate and falsify are clearly there. There is little or no punishment.”

Groshen said that while she does not expect US economic data to stop being reliable in the immediate future, “we seem headed in that direction.”

“For now, the BLS will continue to operate as it has before,” she said.

“We will need to start worrying if and when the president’s people are embedded there.”

Israel launched an unprecedented strike on Iran’s military and nuclear sites on June 13, a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board passed a resolution saying Tehran was not complying with its commitment to nuclear safeguards.

Though Israel did not use the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s resolution to justify the Iran attack, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the IAEA resolution, calling it “a necessary and overdue step” that confirmed Iran’s “systematic clandestine nuclear weapons programme”.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Atomic Energy Organization in a joint statement condemned the resolution, calling it “politically motivated”. The resolution, the joint statement said, “seriously undermines the credibility and integrity of the IAEA”.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes and that its facilities are monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog.

Here’s what the IAEA said about the Iranian nuclear programe earlier this month, and its criticisms against its past actions.

Did the IAEA think that Iran was building nuclear weapons?

The IAEA cannot fully assess Iran’s nuclear energy programmes, as Tehran halted its implementation of the Additional Protocol in February 2021, which permitted the IAEA enhanced inspection rights – including snap inspections and continuous surveillance.

Iran continued to comply with IAEA’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement after 2021, which permitted access to Iran’s declared nuclear sites (Natanz, Fordow, Bushehr) and also allowed for routine monitoring and verification of declared nuclear material.

At a press event in Vienna on June 9, however, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said Iran’s recent failure to comply with reporting obligations had “led to a significant reduction in the agency’s ability to verify whether Iran’s nuclear programme is entirely peaceful”.

During the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting (which took place from June 9-13), Grossi said Iran had “repeatedly either not answered… the agency’s questions” regarding the presence of man-made uranium particles at three locations – Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad.

Grossi also described Iran’s “rapid accumulation of highly-enriched uranium” as a “serious concern”, referring to the 60 percent pure uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz.

In 2023, the IAEA had discovered 83.7 percent pure uranium particles at Fordow – close to the 90 percent purity required to make an atomic bomb.

On June 12, one day before Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA board passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was breaching its non-proliferation obligations.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Vienna on June 12, noted it was the first time in almost 20 years that the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s nuclear programme, had accused Tehran of breaching its non-proliferation obligations.

Last week, however, Grossi emphasised that the IAEA had found no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons production.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on June 19, Grossi was emphatic that Iran’s alleged violations of its assurances had not led his agency to conclude that Tehran was building bombs.

“We have not seen elements to allow us, as inspectors, to affirm that there was a nuclear weapon that was being manufactured or produced somewhere in Iran,” he said.

United States Vice President JD Vance invoked the IAEA resolution to make a case for the military action against Iran.

“They’ve been found in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is hardly a rightwing organization,” he posted on X on June 17.

The US president ordered his military to bomb three Iranian sites on June 22 – a decision welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been making claims for decades that Iran was on the cusp of making nuclear weapons.

Trump has claimed that the nuclear sites have been “obliterated” and Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by decades.

How has Iran responded?

On June 23, the national security committee of Iran’s parliament approved the outline of a bill designed to suspend Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei told the Tasnim news agency.

Rezaei said that, according to the bill, installing surveillance cameras, allowing inspections, and submitting reports to the IAEA would be suspended as long as the security of nuclear facilities is not guaranteed. Iran joined the IAEA in 1959.

In particular, Rezaei said Iran asserts its right, as a 1968 signatory to the UN’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment.

Parliament still has to approve the NPT withdrawal bill in a plenary.

Tehran has long complained that the treaty fails to protect it from attack by a country with a nuclear arsenal, the US, and another widely believed to have one, Israel.

What’s more, Iranian authorities have claimed Grossi is looking to become the next secretary-general of the UN, and is therefore sacrificing the nuclear watchdog’s integrity by adopting pro-Western rhetoric to gain personal favour.

On June 1, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, told state TV: “Rafael Grossi [is] driven by his ambitions and a strong desire to become the UN secretary-general, is seeking to gain the approval of a few specific countries and align himself with their goals.”

Did the IAEA skirt controversy over the Fukushima disaster?

In June 2023, the Japanese government started releasing treated, but still radioactive, water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean.

The IAEA gave the controversial plan the green light following a two-year review.

At the time, Grossi said the agency’s safety review had concluded the plan was “consistent with relevant international safety standards… [and] the controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”.

More than 1.3 million tonnes of water had built up at the Fukushima plant since a March 2011 tsunami destroyed the power station’s electricity and cooling systems and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.

The release of the water, which began in August 2023, encountered fierce resistance from Japan’s neighbours and Pacific island nations as well as fishing and agricultural communities in and around Fukushima, which fear for their livelihoods.

Beijing, in particular, was a fierce critic of the water discharge plan. In a statement following the IAEA’s July 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs chastised its “hasty release”, claiming it “failed to fully reflect views from experts”.

Are there echoes of Iraq in the current debate about Iran?

To several observers, there are.

In the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), including chemical weapons, in addition to pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

These claims were central in justifying military action under the argument that Iraq posed an imminent threat to regional and global security.

Towards the end of 2002, the IAEA carried out several inspections of Iraqi weapons programmes.

In early 2003, they established the existence of high-tolerance aluminium tubes in Iraq. In theory, these can be used to enrich uranium for use in a nuclear warhead.

The aluminium tubes became a cornerstone in the Bush administration’s Iraq mandate. As the only physical evidence the US could brandish, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President George W Bush and his advisers.

The tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programmes”, Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, explained on CNN on September 8, 2002. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

For its part, the IAEA refuted the theory that the tubes were destined for use in a nuclear programme. And after the invasion, extensive searches found no active WMD programmes in Iraq.