an agreement on how to address the outstanding issues about Iran’s nuclear program. No such agreement was signed. And no future meeting was scheduled.
In a later interview with The Wall Street Journal, Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said, “After today’s meeting, without any progress, there were some setbacks. I cannot be in an optimistic mood.”
He did not say the talks had “collapsed” or were finished. But he made clear they had gone nowhere and accomplished nothing, despite Amano’s summary last month that after his talks in Tehran an agreement was almost complete and would be signed “soon.”
The Journal quoted IAEA officials as saying the tone of talks Friday deteriorated as Iran appeared to back away from commitments made last month to Amano.
A number of Americans compared the Iranian process to the Lucy character in the “Peanuts” cartoon strip. For a half-century, Lucy has promised Charlie Brown that she will hold the football so that Charlie Brown can kick it. And every time as Charlie races up to the ball, Lucy pulls the ball away at the last moment so that Charlie goes flying on his fanny. Lucy is the epitome of deviousness and dishonesty and Charlie Brown is the innocent who always wants to believe the best.
For years, the IAEA has been seeking access to papers, places and people linked to Iran’s nuclear program—papers about the history of the program; places where the IAEA suspects some nuclear weaponry work has been done; and people it has heard mentioned as being involved in weapons work. But the Islamic Republic has always pulled the ball away at the last moment.
One of the sites the IAEA wants to see is on the Parchin military base where recent satellite photos show a suspect building being washed and nearby structures dismantled.
Amano told the Journal his teams needed time to “digest” the reasons for the Iranian shift between his meeting in Tehran last month and the meeting his deputy had with Iranian negotiators Friday. He said he didn’t know if more talks could be held.
The Friday talks were led by Herman Nackaerts, Amano’s chief deputy. Nackaerts said the two sides met for eight hours and made absolutely “no progress.”
Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, also contradicted Amano’s summary of his May meeting in Baghdad when he indicated Iran had made a number of concessions and a written agreement was nearly completed. Soltanieh said Iran had never made any specific commitments to greater access by the IAEA, but had only pledged its “determination” to reach an agreement. He ignored the point that the only agreement the IAEA wants is one that grants greater access.
Soltanieh said IAEA inspectors should be sticking to their core duty of accounting for the lack of diversion of any Iranian nuclear materials and shouldn’t be asked to investigate allegations of weapons work.