Iran and IAEA

[amjadiqbal]

Iran Ready for IAEA Inspections at ParchinIran has announced that it is ready to open upits Parchin military facility for inspections by theInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — a movelikely to retard the growing call for military strikesagainst Iran’s nuclear facilities. In Vienna, the officeof Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s permanentrepresentative to the IAEA, issued a statement thatthe agency’s inspectors could visit Parchin once anagreement was reached on the modalities forinspections. In a day of fast-paced developments, thefive permanent members of the U.N. SecurityCouncil and Germany, who are demanding that Ifreeze all uranium enrichment, announced that theyhave accepted an offer to resume stalled nuclear talkswith Tehran. Denial of access to Parchin hademerged as a major stumbling block in the latestround of talks between the IAEA and the Iranians onclarifying that Tehran was not running a clandestinenuclear weapon programme. The IAEA has beenpressing for access to Parchin after reports emergedin 2004 of the presence at the facility of a largecontainment vessel where the Iranians might havebeen testing explosives as part of hydrodynamicexperiments. The IAEA has warned thathydrodynamic experiments, which involve the useof conventional explosives along with nuclearmaterial or its surrogates are “strong indicators ofpossible weapon development”.