ON MAY 6TH Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), travelled to Tehran and met Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister. Less than two weeks later, on May 19th, Mr Amirabdollahian was dead, killed in a helicopter crash that also took the life of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, among others.

Their deaths throw Iran’s sclerotic theocracy into a moment of confusion and uncertainty, one with far-reaching implications for the country’s nuclear programme. Mr Grossi, fresh from his trip to Iran, recently spoke to The Economist about the Iranian nuclear file, as well as the other items on his forbidding to-do list, from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear-power plant in Ukraine to the “growing attraction” of nuclear weapons worldwide.