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Iran Refuses to Open Military Sites to IAEA
Iran said yesterday it could not be required to open military sites suspected of housing nuclear weapons work to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 3). “It is not a matter of unlimited commitments and unlimited inspections,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “We will act in accordance with the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], our duties and responsibilities,” he added. The agency has requested access to the Parchin military base east of Tehran, where U.S. officials have charged that Iran may be testing “high-explosive shaped charges with an inert core of depleted uranium,” according to AFP. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said that he had “every reason to expect that Iran will allow us to go” to Parchin. Asefi said Tehran has received no official request from the agency to inspect Parchin, but added that “we are ready to cooperate within the framework of our commitments with the IAEA.” Asefi also said comments Friday by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani that the country’s uranium enrichment suspension would not last more than six months should not be interpreted as a rigid timetable, explaining that Rafsanjani only mentioned six months as an “example” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 5). ElBaradei said he was satisfied with the level of access his inspectors have in Iran. “We do not have the authority to go everywhere,” ElBaradei said Saturday, but he said this was a “nonissue because we have received access to every facility we asked for in Iran.” As nuclear material might not be present at a suspected weapons site, the agency’s legal authority is “quite limited when you get into the area of nuclear weapons-related activity,” one diplomat said. ElBaradei, however, rejected concerns that the inspection process might be too slow and give Iran enough time to hide material. “The easiest thing to look for is nuclear material because of the signature,” which inspectors discover through environmental samples, he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 5). U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday that Washington could not compel Iran to grant IAEA inspectors access to suspect sites, Reuters reported. “I can’t make sure it is going to happen,” he said. “You can’t look in every cave that might be in Iran.” Powell also said Iran’s nuclear suspension deal with European nations last month was inadequate, but acknowledged Washington’s inability to gain international support to demand full access to Tehran’s military sites. “We have to remain uneasy about this (European agreement) because it is still only a suspension. ... We really need an end to that program,” he said. “It is a question of whether or not the international community ... will be diligent and will be persistent in pressing the Iranians to give us full disclosure of their programs,” he added (Saul Hudson, Reuters, Dec. 3). Iran yesterday denied allegations that ElBaradei conspired with Tehran to omit incriminating evidence about its nuclear program from his report to the agency’s Board of Governors ahead of their consideration of Iran’s case last week, the Associated Press reported. “Iran had no compromise or deals with anyone, including ElBaradei,” Asefi said, referring to U.S. allegations that ElBaradei eliminated details about Iran’s work with beryllium (Associated Press, Dec. 5). ElBaradei also denied the claim. “We never show a report to any single member” of the agency, “not the least of course an inspected country,” ElBaradei told AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 4). Meanwhile, an Iranian official indicated that Tehran sped up its uranium enrichment activities during the past year to gain leverage in negotiations with European countries, the New York Times reported. Sirus Naseri, a member of the Iranian team negotiating a nuclear deal with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, yesterday was quoted in the Shargh newspaper as saying that Iran had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle last year. “We are in a better negotiating position for political work than last year,” he said. Former Iranian IAEA ambassador Ali Akbar Salehi said Wednesday that Iran had for the first time allocated money and facilities to produce “advanced centrifuges” for uranium enrichment, Shargh also reported (Nazila Fathi, New York Times, Dec. 6). Elsewhere, the U.S. Defense Department has begun scouting an area in the Holang desert of Afghanistan within 20 miles of the Iran border for a potential military base, the New York Sun reported. The base would mainly be used by the Afghan army, two Bush administration sources familiar with the plan said, but U.S. aircraft would also likely be deployed there. The base would expand U.S. options should Washington decide to use force to derail Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, according to the Sun (Eli Lake, New York Sun, Dec. 6).
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