The State Department said Wednesday that it has full confidence in the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect a key Iranian site under the Iran nuclear deal, despite new reports saying Iran will be able to use its own inspectors for the Parchin site.
State spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. and other countries in the P5+1 are apparently powerless to renegotiate the IAEA’s arrangement.
“Because it’s reflective of a relationship between the IAEA and Iran, it’s not for the P5+1 to endorse or negate,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that the IAEA will allow Iranian officials to inspect the site, a fact that seems likely to lead to more criticism over the deal that has already seen some Democrats say they oppose it. Members of both parties have said Iran can’t be trusted to stick to the deal, and are likely to criticize any arrangement allowing Iran to self-verify its own compliance.
When pressed on that report, Kirby declined several times to discuss the details of the IAEA program. But he didn’t deny the AP report, and said the Obama administration remains confident that the program will work.
“We have full confidence in the IAEA and in the inspection regimen that they will establish and set up to make sure that Iran cannot achieve nuclear weapons capability,” he said. “We’re very comfortable with the arrangements.”
“We’re confident in the agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program, issues that in some cases date back more than a decade,” Kirby added. “Just as importantly, IAEA is comfortable with arrangements which are unique to the agency’s investigation of Iran’s historical activities.”
Kirby also claimed that the IAEA has developed “the most robust inspection regime ever peacefully negotiated to ensure Iran’s current program remains exclusively peaceful.”
Republicans in particular have pressed the administration to fully spell out the details of the IAEA inspection regime, but the Obama administration has said it doesn’t own the document, and has only been able to review it. Still, officials have defended it and have said these arrangements are typically not made public.
One report pressed Kirby on how Secretary of State John Kerry could have said the IAEA’s inspection regime for Iran could be seen as “routine” if it lets Iran choose who does the inspecting. Kirby deflected that by saying IAEA arrangements are routine, even if the details of the one with Iran are different.
“It’s routine that the IAEA has these arrangements with individual countries,” he said. “Those arrangements are, as we’ve said, confidential between the nation itself and the IAEA, that’s what’s routine here.”
