The State Department on Wednesday downplayed concerns over a reported deal that would allow Iranian inspectors to investigate their own military site.
The West has long believed the site, Parchin, was used for covert nuclear military activity, and access to the area has been a matter of negotiations between Tehran and world powers seeking to curb that program. Under the agreement reached by the parties in July, the process for inspections would be governed by agreements between Iran and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
That the deal between Iran and the IAEA involves the use of Iranian inspectors to investigate Parchin was reported by The Associated Press, which described the agreement as part of the agency’s inquiry into past nuclear activity.
The conclusion of that inquiry is a critical step in the implementation of international sanctions relief under a wider deal between Iran and world powers.
The specifics of the deal between the IAEA and Iran over the Parchin inspections are not included in the nuclear agreement, but Iran is required to satisfy the IAEA’s concerns about its program under that deal.
“We’re confident in the agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said, “issues that, in some cases, date back more than a decade.”
Kirby would neither confirm nor deny the specifics of the IAEA deal reported by the AP.
But those assurances are not enough to satisfy some congressional Republicans, who say the IAEA arrangement is evidence the international community can’t hold Iran accountable on its pledge not to seek nuclear weapons.
“The Obama administration has a lot of explaining to do,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement Wednesday. “Why haven’t these secret side agreements been provided to Congress and the American people for review? Why should Iran be trusted to carry out its own nuclear inspections at a military site it tried to hide from the world? How does this not set a precedent for future inspections at suspicious military sites in Iran?”
Kirby stressed that lawmakers have been briefed on the IAEA deal in a classified setting.
In his statement, however, Boehner called these briefings “totally insufficient,” and said, “it still isn’t clear whether anyone at the White House has seen the final documents.”
Iran and six world powers including the United States reached a broad agreement last month in which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program, including invasive inspections, in exchange for a repeal of crippling sanctions. Critics in Congress, who will vote in September on whether to reject the deal, have repeatedly raised questions about how those inspections will be handled.