Argentina Begins Campaign to Support Atomic Energy Chief Threatened by Iran to Lead U.N.

The government of Argentine President Javier Milei has created a government office to support the candidates of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi to become the next United Nations secretary-general, the newspaper La Nación reported on Tuesday.

Current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will vacate the position in 2026, leaving an open race for the leadership of the global institution. At press time, Grossi – best known for exposing Iran’s serial violations of the 2015 nuclear deal in the days preceding President Donald Trump’s military strikes on the country – is the only listed candidate for the position on the United Nations website. Months of rumors and anonymous reports indicate the election will be highly contested, however, most prominently by socialist former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who successor Gabriel Boric announced as a candidate during his General Assembly speech in September. Given Grossi’s repeated condemnations of the Iranian Islamist regime for its refusal to cooperate with the IAEA, he is likely to face opposition from the Iranian regime and its allies.

The next secretary-general will hold the position from 2027 to 2031.

Argentina presented Grossi’s nomination official on Monday, as the country of his citizenship. The Milei administration, according to La Nación, will also enthusiastically back Grossi and campaign for votes from other countries for the nuclear chief. The United Nations does not typically hold open campaigning for the position, leaving much of the process behind closed doors; Grossi himself compared the situation to a papal conclave in a recent interview.

La Nación added, citing anonymous officials within Milei’s government, that the administration has “created a special coordination unit in which will work members of the Foreign Ministry as well as Grossi’s own team.”

“Argentina’s disposition is such that Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno is completely dedicated to the issue,” an anonymous “official source” was quoted as saying. “For now, from the San Martín Palace, they are refusing to say clearly with which countries dialogue has already begun seeking support.” The San Martín Palace is the headquarters of the Argentine Foreign Ministry.

Quirno, the Argentine top diplomat, issued public remarks in support of Grossi on Monday, describing the choice of supporting him as a “profound reflection about the critical moment that the multilateral system encounters and about the type of leadership that the United Nations needs today to recover efficacy and credibility.”

As the head of the IAEA, Grossi’s two largest geopolitical concerns have been Iran’s consistent violation of international law regarding nuclear development and the threat to nuclear power plants caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Grossi has consistently lamented the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal, as a dead document that no parties respect, much less Iran. Before the IAEA board in June, Grossi accused Iran of hiding illicit nuclear development from the agency, contrary to international law, and making it difficult for the agency to conduct its lawful inspections.

“Unfortunately, Iran has repeatedly either not answered, or not provided technically credible answers to the Agency’s questions” about mystery nuclear sites, Grossi stated in his report to the IAEA board. “It has also sought to sanitize the locations, which has impeded Agency verification activities.”

“Arising from this, the Agency also concludes that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at these three undeclared locations in Iran,” he added. “As a consequence of this, the Agency is not in a position to determine whether the related nuclear material is still outside of safeguards.”

As a result of that report, the IAEA voted to find Iran in breach of international law for the first time in two decades. President Trump announced that U.S. troops had bombed Iran’s most prominent nuclear sites – at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – days later.

Iranian officials responded with outrage and threats against Grossi himself.

“Once the war is over, we will settle accounts with Grossi,” Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in late June. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei accused Grossi of “betrayal” for revealing Tehran’s violations.

Grossi will be pitting his record at the IAEA against those of his challengers; while the United Nations does not list any other official candidates at press time, former Chilean President Bachelet has already tossed her hat in the ring. In addition to leading that country, Bachelet recently served as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022. In that role, Bachelet was the subject of significant criticism for her apparent defense of the Chinese Communist Party during an investigation into its ongoing genocide of Turkic people in occupied East Turkistan. After visiting China on a human rights mission in 2022, Bachelet claimed that the well-documented concentration camps for Uyghurs and other Turkic people had been “dismantled” and praised China’s alleged progress on human rights. In reality, China has imprisoned as many as 3 million people in concentration camps and subjected them to atrocities such as killing, torture, slavery, indoctrination, and potential organ harvesting.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric, in announcing Bachelet’s candidacy, claimed it was appropriate because the U.N. must “face the historic disequilibrium of gender” and “reflect the advances of the world and recognize that a woman in the lead is not just a symbol of equity, but a concrete expression of justice and shared leadership.”

Other candidates reportedly considering a run for secretary general include former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan, authoritarian former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern; and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, though these have not made their intentions known at press time.

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