The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog is likely to face tough questioning Wednesday when he comes to Washington to brief senators on his agency’s “side deal” with Iran as lawmakers refuse to concede on their demands for the original documents.
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed Friday to a request by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to a classified briefing on the arrangement to deal with concerns over Iran’s past work on developing nuclear weapons. The letter requesting his appearance was signed by all 19 committee members, Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said.
But lawmakers continue to insist on seeing the text of the “roadmap” signed July 14 in Vienna, along with its annexes, though most of it remains confidential.
“Senator Corker and I believe that we should review these documents,” Ben Cardin of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said Tuesday.
The roadmap creates the process by which Iran is supposed to resolve outstanding issues with the IAEA over its past nuclear weapons work by Oct. 15. Under the broader deal worked out between Iran and six world powers on the same day, a Dec. 15 IAEA report on the issue would trigger a lifting of international sanctions.
But Congress must vote by mid-September if it wants a say over the lifting of sanctions, which is why this issue has become a major sticking point in the review process.
“What concerns me is the quality of the report that we’re going to get from the IAEA on Dec. 15,” Cardin said, noting that access for IAEA inspectors to Iranian sites was crucial to the process. “That’s something that we should know before we vote.”
Lawmakers on the committee turned directly to the IAEA after being rebuffed by the Obama administration in their bid for access to the documents.
“Those documents all remain confidential; that’s the standard,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters Friday, noting that this was essential to preserving the IAEA’s independence.
Moniz and other administration officials have sought to tamp down the controversy, saying they are satisfied with the process for verifying Iran’s past work. He and other officials have briefed lawmakers in secret on what they know about the roadmap.
The agency also is under pressure from Iran not to reveal the contents of the documents to U.S. officials, either in the administration or Congress.
But lawmakers say briefings aren’t sufficient, noting that Iran’s past lack of trustworthiness makes this a special case.
“It doesn’t seem to me that we’re going to get a particularly satisfying report,” Corker said, referring to the IAEA’s expected Dec. 15 evaluation, at a panel hearing Tuesday where nuclear experts noted that Iran had stonewalled the agency for four years.
In a letter sent Monday to Secretary of State John Kerry, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said access by Congress to the original documents is vital “since Iran will almost certainly treat these arrangements as setting a standard for future IAEA requests to access suspicious sites—particularly those on military bases.”
A separate letter Tuesday to President Obama from 94 House members asked him once again to obtain the roadmap and associated documents from the IAEA and hand them over to Congress.
