UN nuclear watchdog dismisses Israeli intel, praises Iranian ‘cooperation’

International nuclear agency assailed for ignoring critical Israeli intelligence as it praises Iranian ‘cooperation’ with 2015 nuclear deal.

By The Algemeiner

A prominent think tank has criticized the report published this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirming the Tehran regime’s continuing compliance with the JCPOA — the watershed nuclear deal on the country’s illicit nuclear program reached in July 2015, but decertified by the US in May this year as part of President Donald Trump’s new offensive against Iran’s Islamist rulers.

The Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security — a private think tank that houses several nuclear weapons experts, including former senior IAEA inspectors — said on its Twitter feed that Monday’s IAEA report on Iran made “no mention of its receipt of or efforts to investigate the nuclear archive seized from Tehran, despite its mandate to investigate new information relevant to possible military dimensions as it arises.”

The IAEA tweet was a reference to the revelations earlier this year by Israeli intelligence agencies about “Project Amad” — a covert nuclear program that the Iranian regime ran between 1999 and 2003. Details of Iran’s attempts over that period to weaponize its covert nuclear program were presented to the international community by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May and, more recently, at the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

In his speech at the UN, Netanyahu called on Yukiya Amano — the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — to dispatch IAEA inspectors to what Israel had identified as “a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran for storing massive amounts of equipment and material from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.”

“Go and inspect this atomic warehouse immediately before the Iranians clean it out,” Netanyahu urged the IAEA chief in his UN speech. “While you’re at it, inspect the other sites. Once and for all, tell the world the truth about Iran.”

IAEA: ‘Timely and proactive cooperation’

Monday’s IAEA report, however, asserted that the agency had accessed all the sites in Iran that it needed to visit. IAEA inspectors confirmed Iran had kept within the limits of heavy water and low-enriched uranium stockpiles set by the 2015 nuclear deal.

“Timely and proactive cooperation by Iran in providing such access facilitates implementation of the additional protocol and enhances confidence,” the IAEA report stated, referring to the procedure detailing safeguards and tools for verification.

But that claim was also criticized by the Institute for Science and International Security, which accused the IAEA of “failing to mention how exactly it is implementing Section T, given that it recently failed to act on information that Iran was moving relevant equipment from a warehouse identified by Israel.”

“Section T” refers to a set of key paragraphs in an appendix to the JCPOA that governs Iranian “activities that could lead to the design and development of an explosive nuclear device.” Under the terms of that section of the deal, Iran agreed to refrain from all activities relating to nuclear weapons design.

The IAEA’s latest decision to award Iran a clean bill of health was portrayed in Iran’s official media as a sign that the robust sanctions imposed by the US on Nov. 5 were not being adhered to by America’s allies and partners, five of whom remain parties to the nuclear agreement.

“The other parties to the JCPOA have repeatedly announced that the deal is working and should stay in place,” Press TV — the Tehran regime’s English-language mouthpiece — stated on Monday. It further claimed that “Britain, Germany and France have been scrambling to shield companies from the effects of new US sanctions and protect Iranian oil revenues.”