places and papers the body has sought for years—but Iran hasn’t actually put any of those promises on paper yet.
The presumed agreement was announced just the day before Iran and the Big Powers were due to sit down and discuss Iran’s nuclear program. There were widespread suspicions that Tehran would try to use the “agreement” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to duck any pressures for concessions in those talks in Baghdad.
Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, led the Iranian team in the talks Monday with the IAEA. He does not normally have that role. Shortly after those talks, Jalili boarded a plane for Baghdad, where he led the Iranian team in the talks with the Big Six, held after the Iran Times went to press.
Yukiya Amano, the director general of the IAEA, told reporters in Vienna after returning from a one-day visit to Tehran, “The decision was made … to reach agreement on the mechanics of giving the IAEA access to sites, scientists and documents it seeks to restart its probe” into the extent of Iran’s nuclear program.
Many noted the odd phrasing about deciding to reach agreement rather than agreeing.
Amano said that differences still existed between Iran and the IAEA on “some details,” which were not spelled out. But he said Jalili had assured him these “will not be an obstacle to reach agreement.” Cynics asked why they had not already been resolved if that was true.
Amano said there was “an almost clean text” already on paper, and said it would be signed “quite soon.” But he did not give a deadline or even a target date for signing, which raised some eyebrows.
The IAEA has been prohibited for years from interviewing a number of scientists it has identified as having roles in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has also refused to provide many documents the IAEA says it needs for its probes. The IAEA also wants to see several sites where nuclear work is suspected. There are a number of sites, but attention has focused mainly on one building on the Parchin military installation south of Tehran where the IAEA suspects experiments were once conducted on designing and building the trigger for a nuclear weapon.
Neither Amano nor Jalili said anything about access to Parchin specifically. Amano just said it would be addressed in the eventual written agreement. But the world would be unlikely to view Amano’s talks as a success without access to Parchin.
The United States was publicly skeptical. Robert Wood, the acting US ambassador to the IAEA, said, “While we appreciate the efforts [by Amano] to conclude a substantive agreement, we remain concerned by the urgent obligation for Iran to Ö cooperate fully.”
An unnamed Western official in Vienna was more blunt. He told Reuters, “There is skepticism until this is signed and then, once it is signed, there will be skepticism until it is implemented.”
Another official said access to Parchin was “important but not sufficient.” He said even if the IAEA gets everything it wants, that will not conclude the issue of Iran. The Big Six talks with Iran are geared to curbing Iran’s current nuclear program, while the IAEA is just trying to find out what work Iran has done in the past related to nuclear weapons.
Officially, the Big Six talks are to achieve the demand of the UN Security Council resolutions that Iran halt all uranium enrichment. But at this point, officials have made clear that an initial Iranian agreement to limit enrichment to 5 percent, halting the current 20 percent enrichment program, would be considered serious progress.
The IAEA effort to get access to people, places and paper dates back four years with no success yet. The talks held in Baghdad of Iran with the major powers actually began nine years ago. Nothing has been accomplished in those nine years.