Israel responded with furious cynicism Wednesday night to news that Iran is to be allowed to conduct its own inspections of a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms. In the US, Republican leaders also responded bitterly to the news, with a leading senator calling the agreement to have Iran inspect its own suspect site “remarkably naive and incredibly reckless.”
According to a document obtained by the Associated Press, an agreement worked out between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran allows the Islamic Republic to use its own experts to inspect the Parchin nuclear site. The IAEA’s concession is unprecedented, according to a former senior IAEA official.
Iran has refused access to Parchin for years. Based on US, Israeli and other intelligence and its own research, the IAEA suspects that the Islamic Republic may have experimented with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms at that military facility. The IAEA has also repeatedly cited evidence, based on satellite images, of possible attempts to sanitize the site since the alleged work stopped more than a decade ago.
While the White House declined to comment on the reported document, Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz immediately issued a caustic response. “One must welcome this global innovation and outside-the-box thinking,” he said in a statement dripping with sarcasm. “One can only wonder if the Iranian inspectors will also have to wait 24 days before being able to visit the site and look for incriminating evidence?”
Steinitz, the Israeli government’s point man on Iran, was alluding to the complex clauses in the agreement reached last month between world powers and Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear program, one of which provides Iran with 24-days notice of efforts to inspect suspect sites.
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