A pair of GOP lawmakers are trying again to get the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog to release its confidential side deal with Iran, saying they need the document to vote on additional funding the agency has requested.
In a letter Friday to Secretary of State John Kerry, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked him to instruct the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency to seek a vote on releasing the agreement and any annexes.
“Without these side agreements there is no way to make decisions on additional funding,” they wrote.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said Tuesday that the agency would need an additional $10.5 million a year to hire more inspectors and obtain new equipment to meet the verification requirements of the broader nuclear deal with Iran signed July 14 in Vienna. Much of that will come from the United States, which provides about a third of the agency’s budget.
The confidential side arrangements detail how Iran will account for outstanding issues related to past work that is widely believed to have been aimed at developing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA has been tasked with reporting on Iran’s compliance by Dec. 15, after which Iran is set to receive relief from international sanctions that have crippled its economy.
U.S. lawmakers already were skeptical of the secret side deal, and angry that the agency wouldn’t let them see it, when the Associated Press reported last week that it included an arrangement allowing Iran to use its own inspectors at the Parchin military base, where the United States and other nations believe illicit nuclear weapons work was done in the past.
It’s not the first time this controversy has put the IAEA’s funding at risk. Earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a GOP presidential candidate, wrote Kerry threatening to hold up the agency’s funding this year if the documents are not released.
“As an indication of how serious I view the provision of copies of these side agreements to our national security, I intend to condition and/or withhold voluntary contributions to the IAEA in fiscal year 2016 should they not be provided prior to the congressional debate next month,” he wrote.
