The White House on Thursday waded into the war of words between the State Department and the New York Times over a story on Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest backed up an earlier contention by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf that Iran’s increased stockpile did not amount to a violation by Tehran of the initial nuclear agreement with the U.S. and several other world powers. Earnest said that deal allowed some variances in how much fuel Iran holds.
“We have seen this type of fluctuation of enriched uranium in past agreements. Iran does continue to produce enriched uranium,” Earnest said. “But the agreement calls for [them] to reach a cap at the end of agreement, by June 30.”
“By the end of the day, they have to be at the cap. That’s how we will evaluate their continued compliance,” he added.
He also argued that the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations watchdog organization, would never have this level of “insight” about the level of Iran’s stockpile if the U.S. had not been engaged in negotiations aimed at rolling back Tehran’s nuclear program. “That’s how we are able to assess with such great precision the level of their stockpile,” Earnest said.
The New York Times this week ran a story saying the IAEA had assessed that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile had grown by 20 percent over the last 18 months.
The story said the increased stockpile undercut the Obama administration’s argument that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period, and posed a major hurdle in trying to convince members of Congress that Tehran would reduce its stockpile by 96 percent in a matter of months if a final deal is reached.
Harf on Wednesday engaged in a Twitter fight with David Sanger, one of two New York Times reporters who wrote the story about the stockpile, arguing that many aspects of the story were “not true.”
Later, during a briefing with reporters, she argued that Iran’s stockpile could fluctuate under the current interim agreement “as long as at the end of a fixed date they are back down below a number.”
Sanger responded on Twitter: “For those at State Dept. ‘perplexed’ by story on Iran today, it’s worth reading this study: isis-online.org/uploads/isis-r…twitter.com/joshrogin/stat”
