The White House said Monday that it’s confident the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog will have as much access as it needs to Iran’s Parchin military site.
The expression of confidence comes in response to a report late last week suggesting that Iranian technicians, not international inspectors, would take the lead in collecting soil samples to check for the presence of nuclear material.
“What I am confident of is that the IAEA will get access to all the information they need and the site that they need in order to conclude their report,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the first daily briefing after the president returned from vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
The State Department gave a similar explanation on Monday, and some reporters noted State’s way of saying “access and information,” a change from the week before, when State said the IAEA would have “access.”
But Earnest stressed that the IAEA did not compromise its standards in the way it has agreed to work with the Iranians to inspect Parchin, the location where Iran allegedly tested conventional explosives relevant to its nuclear weapons research more than a decade ago.
“The fact is that the arrangements between Iran and the IAEA are sound and consistent with the IAEA’s long-established practice,” Earnest said.
The Associated Press Thursday reported on a draft document of a side deal between the IAEA and Iran that suggested that the watchdog agency would not send its own inspectors into Parchin, but would rely on data from Iran instead. The head of the IAEA has since pushed back, calling the report a “misrepresentation.”
“I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in a statement on Thursday.
Under an agreement Iran reached with the IAEA on the sidelines of the July 14 deal between Tehran, the U.S. and other world powers, the Islamic Republic is required to provide the agency information about its past nuclear program to allow the Vienna-based watchdog to write a report by year-end.
Iran says its nuclear program has no military dimensions and is purely for peaceful energy purposes. The IAEA has charged that Tehran has long stonewalled its investigation into the possible military aspects of its past nuclear activities.
