Inspection Of IAEA Facility Finds Traces Of Competence

Representatives of the agency declined to comment.

Vienna, September 10 – A recent exploration of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s various offices and laboratories has turned up evidence that the organization possesses the capacity to conduct effective monitoring of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, a fact that critics contend the agency has attempted to conceal.

External auditors arrived unannounced last week at the various offices and technical facilities of the IAEA in Europe, Canada, and Japan, and swept the buildings for evidence as they appropriated or reviewed documents. The team’s initial findings, reported an auditor spokesman, give strong indications that the IAEA may have or have had in its possession the ability and means to live up to the part of its mission devoted to preventing the proliferation of atomic weapons. Representatives of the agency declined to comment.

Oversight specialist Natdemo Saad told reporters that the preliminary information collected in the sweep points to failures in IAEA mechanisms designed and thought to prevent the exercise of competence, especially in the context of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. “Figures within the organization, in addition to advocates outside it, have claimed for years that the IAEA cannot verify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA,” he stated, referring to the 2015 agreement brokered by US then-Secretary of State John Kerry of the Barack Obama presidential administration. “What appears to emerge from our initial inspection of documents and other evidence, however, contradicts that assertion, and raises the distinct possibility that the agency could have played a role in living up to its stated mission. We will continue to examine the evidence and report our conclusions as we reach them.”

The IAEA pursues three main goals: international cooperation on nuclear energy technology, promoting safe practices in nuclear energy production, and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The investigation related to the third of those goals, which numerous critics have charged the organization effectively abandoned vis-à-vis Iran under pressure from the Obama administration and its European allies to sweeten the JCPOA for the Ayatollahs. Public statements from the IAEA have maintained that legal or professional barriers prevent the agency from conducting proper inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities to determine whether the country has complied with the JCPOA, a position upon which the recent inspections cast doubt. The urgency of making that determination has increased in the wake of both a Mossad raid on a Tehran warehouse that secured troves of materials indicating continued Iranian pursuit of prohibited nuclear technology, and of more recent evidence of uranium storage or processing in violation of the agreement.

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