IAEAs coming report on Iran will likely give more fodder to deals critics

By Walter Pincus , November 16, The Washington Post

Opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement in Washington and Tehran will have their next
opportunity to sabotage its implementation when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
releases a report by Dec. 15 on its investigation into Irans past nuclear weapons activities. Americans
opposed to the deal will reopen debate over whether the IAEA can be trusted to carry out tough
verification measures, providing new ammunition to Republican presidential candidates who have said
they would tear up the agreement. For Iranian conservatives, it opens up the opportunity to delay
preparations for implementation day and, therefore, put off ending economic sanctions. The delay
would help undercut Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose supporters are expected to benefit from
the lifting of sanctions in the Feb. 26 elections for the majlis, Irans parliament. These opponents of the
agreement have an additional incentive because voters that day will also choose the 86 members of the
Assembly of Experts, the only body that can dismiss a supreme leader or choose a successor to Irans
current 76yearold supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Under the side arrangement to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed to
July 14 by the United States, its allies and Iran, the IAEA report on the Possible Military Dimensions
(PMD) issue will not, as some American critics demanded, disclose how far Iran got in developing a
weapon. Nor will it support the claims of Irans leaders that it has always had a peaceful nuclear
program. Instead, as IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told a European Union nonproliferation
conference last Wednesday, The objective of our organization is not to verify the intention of Iran
because it is not possible to verify the intention in the past and in the future. This is not our job. He
said that the IAEAs job was to establish the facts to the best of our ability and write a report that
will present my final assessment on all past and present outstanding issues. It will then be up to the
IAEA member states to determine the appropriate response, Amano said. American critics of the
agreement want more. In March, a bipartisan group of 367 House members wrote President Obama,
Unless we have a full understanding of Irans past program it will be impossible for the international
community to judge Irans future breakout time with certainty. The IAEA needs to know when Iran
sought nuclear weapons, how far it got, what types it sought to develop, and how and where it did this
work, said David Albright, president of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security
and an expert who worked with the IAEA in its 1990s inspections in Iraq. Was this weapons
capability just put on the shelf, waiting to be quickly restarted? he asked.
The report will cause critics again to question why the IAEA allowed Iranians to carry out the
sampling from a building at Parchin, an Iranian military facility, which once contained a large steel
chamber where tests related to nuclear weapon development may have taken place years ago. Iran has
for years limited access to the building. More recently, satellite photos have shown physical work has
been done to it and the surrounding areas. Amano and an aide visited the Parchin building in
September. Last week they said the steel chamber was not there, but we have seen the ongoing
alteration activities. We have taken samples and we are analyzing, and we are reviewing the
examination. This is like a jigsaw puzzle. He defended the Iranians doing the sampling, saying there
was continuous surveillance by us and noting that similar practice has been followed in some 40
other countries, so the Iran situation was not an exceptional case. None of that will satisfy American
JCPOA opponents.
In Tehran, Iranian critics of the agreement have shown how the PMD report would be used to
slow down the process. On Oct. 22, Khamenei had written Rouhani saying that until the IAEA had
settled the PMD issue, Iran should not take the steps required to prepare for implementation of the
JCPOA, including the reduction of its stockpile of enriched uranium and preparations to reconfigure
its Arak heavywater reactor to limit its production of plutonium. Such actions, Khamenei wrote, will
take place after the PMD file is closed. On Nov. 2, however, Rouhani directed that Iran begin
decommissioning inactive centrifuges at its Natanz and Fordow facilities, another requirement of the
JCPOA.
This step immediately generated a letter from 20 conservative members of parliament, saying
Rouhani was ignoring Khameneis directive relating to PMD. As IAEAs Amano said last week, the

PMD matter is still not closed, with a wrapup meeting with Iran . . . in the near future and the final
report by midDecember. On Nov. 9, Iranian decommissioning of centrifuges was halted.
If work does not resume until after the midDecember target for the PMD report, it becomes
extremely doubtful that Irans economic sanctions will end before election day. Amano seems prepared
for the criticism his agency will get from Washington and Iran when the December report on PMD is
released. He told the European Union meeting last week that the IAEA has faced criticism from many
quarters, not all of it fair. We have been accused both of being too tough on Iran and of being too
accommodating. That suggests to me that we have probably got it about right.