With Iran promising to adhere only to the letter of its nuclear treaty obligations, the top international nuclear inspector cautioned yesterday that he would need more access than Tehran is now offering if he is to confirm the lack of a nuclear weapons program in Iran (see GSN, Sept. 29).

International Atomic Energy Agency officials are scheduled to begin a visit to Iran Thursday, but Iranian officials said yesterday that the inspectors would only be allowed to visit previously declared nuclear sites.

However, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said today that the agency would need access to undeclared sites as well.

“If we cannot have full cooperation, full disclosure, unfortunately I’ll have to say that I am not able to verify the Iranian statements (that their nuclear program is purely peaceful),” ElBaradei said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Sept. 30).

If ElBaradei does not find Iran to be fully cooperative, then the IAEA Board of Governors would certainly send the matter to the U.N. Security Council, according to U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

“If the International Atomic Energy Agency director either reports noncompliance or can’t confirm that they have not diverted nuclear material for nonpeaceful purposes, then that would constitute evidence of noncompliance and so the board, the IAEA board, would be obligated to report noncompliance to the Security Council,” Boucher said during yesterday’s State Department briefing. 

He did not say what action the United States would prefer if the council addresses the issue (U.S. State Department release, Sept. 29).

Iran yesterday restated that it is willing to provide more transparency to the IAEA by adopting the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, but only if the United States accepts Iran’s nuclear energy activities as legitimate.

“In principle, we don’t have any problem with that because we don’t have anything to hide,” Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said in a speech yesterday at Columbia University in New York.  “We want to be transparent.  But the question is if that Additional Protocol is enough for us or not.  If it is enough, that means that after signing (the) Additional Protocol, we can go ahead and continue our efforts to use nuclear energy, nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enriching uranium for producing fuel needed in our power plants,” he said.

“We hear voices from Washington that say [the] Additional Protocol is not enough,” he added, “so the question in Iran is, if it is not enough, why we should sign it?” (Kerry Sheridan, VOA News, Sept. 30).

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