Rafael Grossi Has Big Plans for the IAEA. But Can He Deliver?

Rafael Grossi Has Big Plans for the IAEA. But Can He Deliver?
The new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, addresses the media during a news conference in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 2, 2019 (AP photo by Ronald Zak).

Rafael Grossi, a veteran Argentine diplomat, took the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Dec. 3, promising to bring renewed vigor and a higher profile to the world’s nuclear watchdog after the illness and death of his predecessor, Yukiya Amano of Japan.

Grossi, who has previously served as Argentina’s permanent representative to the IAEA and the agency’s effective chief of staff, most recently has been heading preparations for next year’s review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In a fall contest that stretched over several rounds, Grossi bested Romanian diplomat Cornel Feruta and two other competitors to win the support of the agency’s 35-country Board of Governors. Feruta, Amano’s former chief of staff, served as caretaker head of the agency after Amano died unexpectedly in July.

Grossi will now have to lead the U.N. body, which counts 171 member states and has a staff of more than 2,500 people, at a time when it is caught in a great-power crossfire over Iran and deepening rifts between the world’s leading nuclear powers: the United States and Russia.

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