U.S. to Embed Inspectors in Next IAEA Iran Mission, Seeks $672 M to Remove Enriched Uranium

Washington sending its own inspectors under an IAEA flag echoes the 1991–98 UNSCOM model in Iraq, when U.S. and U.K. scientists embedded in U.N. teams both verified dismantlement and quietly gathered intelligence—contributing to later claims of hidden WMD that proved hollow in 2003. Today, as after the 2015 JCPOA, the core tension is sovereignty versus verification: Iran insists on sanctions relief first, while the U.S. makes access a pre-condition, a tug-of-war dating back to the 1950s Atoms-for-Peace bargains. The funding request signals that Washington sees physical removal of material—rather than mere monitoring—as the endgame, reviving a coercive disarmament template last tried with Libya in 2004. Over a century this moment matters less for the dollar figure than for normalising armed intervention followed by ‘inspection and cleanup’ under multilateral cover, a pattern that, if repeated, could entrench a great-power custodianship over nuclear technology and erode the non-proliferation regime’s claim of impartiality.