The State Department indicated that it has no objection to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s surprise announcement Monday that it would not be able to be fully transparent about Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement.
Yukiya Amano, who leads the IAEA, told reporters that the Iran nuclear agreement doesn’t allow the international agency to report publicly on violations of the agreement by Iran, according to one report. At the State Department Monday, reporters said Amano also indicated that Iran would be providing less information about Iran’s compliance than the agency provided before the agreement was reached.
But when asked whether the U.S. supported the IAEA’s announcement, State Department spokesman John Kirby indicated the Obama administration hadn’t heard about this announcement from the IAEA. Kirby also said the administration has no problem with the IAEA’s announcement that it cannot provide full transparency.
“What matters to us is that they are in fact meeting their commitments, and so I don’t want to parse their assessment that information now is less detailed than it was before,” Kirby said. “They would have to speak to that. But as long as Iran continues to meet its commitments under the JCPOA, that’s what matters, and that’s what we want to see.”
When pressed again on whether the Obama administration supports the IAEA’s stance, Kirby repeated again that “what matters to us” is Iran’s compliance with the deal.
Kirby was asked repeatedly about whether a less-than-transparent IAEA would make it harder for people to trust that Iran was implementing the agreement. But Kirby said public transparency doesn’t matter as long as Iran complies with the deal.
“Let’s just assume that it’s accurate, that the reporting requirements are somehow less specific than they used to be,” Kirby said. “That doesn’t mean that the verification procedures in place are any less stringent now than they were before.”
Amano spoke just days after a former deputy director general of the IAEA said the group’s reporting on Iran is “incomplete,” and that it offers “surprisingly scant information on key issues.”
Those include inventories of low-enriched uranium and other stockpiles, the status of various centrifuge components, and other facts, according to the former director general.
