Iran Boosts Nuclear Cooperation Following Diplomatic Push

By Jonathan Tirone

Iran boosted its cooperation with the international nuclear agency that’s trying to determine whether the government in Tehran failed to provide adequate information to monitors.

Following meetings with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York, Iran started to provide more detailed information to International Atomic Energy Agency officials charged with reviewing the country’s uranium stockpiles.

“Engagement doesn’t mean that the issues are completely addressed but this is a step in the right direction,” IAEA acting Director General Cornel Feruta said Friday at a briefing in Vienna. “The message that we sent out in September, and my visit to Tehran, was understood by Iranian officials.”

Feruta had warned Iran that “time is of the essence” in answering IAEA questions. The IAEA has come under increased pressure from the U.S. and Israel to report analysis of environmental samples that detected trace levels of radioactivity at a Tehran warehouse.

Scores of inspectors monitor Iran, both on the ground at the country’s nuclear sites as well as remotely using surveillance technologies, looking for any breach of its compliance with safeguards obligations.

The suggestion that Iran could be providing incomplete information was a warning with potentially serious consequences. The entire international apparatus of rules that the IAEA enforces is based on verifying the correctness and completeness of nations’ declared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities. Countries that don’t adequately provide gram-level accounts of fissile material can be referred to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanction.

The radioactive samples were taken from the Turquz-Abad site earlier this year and have been authenticated by the agency’s network of analytical laboratories, according to a senior diplomat familiar with the agency’s work in Iran, who asked not to be named in line with rules to discuss confidential information.

The site in the Iranian capital was flagged to IAEA inspectors by Israel last year, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intelligence agencies had retrieved documents indicating a secret program to build nuclear bombs. Iran said the claims were recycled from events that the IAEA had already “dealt with.”

Photo: IRNA