Inspecting Iran's Parchin site would be 'useful': IAEA

WASHINGTON: UN nuclear inspections at a military complex near Tehran would be “very useful” despite extensive earth-moving work there by Iranian authorities, the head of the UN atomic agency said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has accused Iranian authorities of undermining its effort to probe suspected nuclear weapons research at the Parchin facility by carrying out possible clean-up operations.
“As these activities are quite intensive, particularly recently, we have concerns that our capacity to verify would have been severely undermined,” IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Council on Foreign Relations conference.
But he added: “I continue to believe that having access is very useful to have a better understanding of the past and current activities at Parchin.”
An IAEA team in 2005 was allowed to inspect the site, where Iranian researchers are suspected of conducting test explosions that could be applied to nuclear weapons.
But at the sprawling complex, the UN team “did not have the information to identify the right spot” to inspect, the IAEA chief said.
“This time, we have additional information. We requested access to particular sites and buildings of Parchin,” he said.
But once the UN agency made the request, satellite imagery showed “very extended activities by Iran. This included demolition of buildings, removal of soils, moving fences, all of these things,” he said.
The UN agency has bolstered its dialogue with Iran but is still not able to declare that all nuclear material there is designated for “peaceful” purposes, he said.