But many critics say it is just a paper concession to allow it to resume stalling as soon as it gets past this week’s IAEA meeting.
Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Tuesday that IAEA inspectors may now visit the Parchin military base south of Tehran where the IAEA suspects Iran has conducted tests on how to build a nuclear warhead.
Iran has repeatedly denied the IAEA access to the site. The IAEA decided to make an issue of that denial earlier this year. It sent a delegation to Tehran in January that specifically pressed for access to Parchin, among other points. The Parchin request was left hanging. The delegation returned in February to get an answer on Parchin and the answer was no.
The IAEA leadership has made a major point of that refusal at this week’s meeting in Vienna of its Board of Governors. Iranian officials at first said no request to visit Parchin had been made, then said Parchin wasn’t a nuclear site and the IAEA had no right of access, then said it was a military base and only the military could make a decision on an IAEA visit and then, on Tuesday, said the IAEA inspectors would be welcomed with open arms maybe.
Many Western diplomats dismissed Iran’s statement as a time-buying gambit, just more stalling disguised as a concession, rather than a genuine shift toward nuclear transparency.
Diplomats cited a proviso in the statement saying that access to Parchin still hinged on a broader agreement on how to settle a multitude of outstanding issues that the two sides have long been unable to settle.
“Considering the fact that Parchin is a military site, granting access is a time-consuming process and cannot be permitted repeatedly,” Iran’s delegation to the IAEA said in the statement.
It added that the “process could be … started when the agreement on modalities is reached”—indicating Tehran had not relaxed its insistence that there must first be an omnibus agreement on how to settle outstanding questions about the nature of Iran’s nuclear work before an inspection trip to Parchin could happen.
Western suspicions about activities at Parchin date back to at least 2004, when a prominent nuclear expert assessed that satellite images showed it might be a site for research and experiments applicable to nuclear warheads.
IAEA inspectors did visit one site on the vast Parchin military base in 2005 but were not allowed access to any of the other sites. They were denied access to the point of main concern a building believed to be a containment chamber where test explosions can be conducted and confined within the chamber.
The Iranian military has flatly denied doing any nuclear work at Parchin. But the suspected work does not involve nuclear materials; it is exclusively conventional explosives that are used in such testing.
Asked about Iran’s statement, Western diplomats familiar with the matter told Reuters they saw an Iranian ploy to play for time, possibly to “sanitize” the Parchin site to eliminate any evidence of suspect activities before inspectors arrive.
One Western diplomat said the Iranian announcement was “nothing new, definitely not” a policy shift.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said Monday the agency had “some indication that activities are ongoing at the Parchin site. It makes us believe that going there sooner is better than later.”
There have been many prolonged, tortuous negotiations and procedural obstacles imposed by Iran since the IAEA first began seeking unfettered access in the country almost a decade ago to check indications of illicit military nuclear activity.
The IAEA has repeatedly said it has been thwarted by Iran’s refusal to let inspectors examine sites, peruse documents and question scientists involved in its program.