THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 22 Nov. 2016- The international agency responsible for monitoring last summer’s nuclear deal with Iran is deliberately not reporting on Iranian activities that may indicate Iran is violating the deal, setting up a potential confrontation with the incoming Trump administration, according to nuclear and nonproliferation experts.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published its regular report on Iranian compliance earlier this month, its fourth since the deal came into effect last January. The report said Iran breached the limit for a material used in the production of weapons-grade plutonium, but left out figures that had been included in IAEA reports for years, including information about the country’s possession of certain forms of uranium.
The agency omitted a number of details in its first quarterly report on Iranian compliance in February. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano defended the gaps by saying the nuclear deal itself had narrowed what the agency was supposed to report. Critics have suggested the underreporting is aimed at covering up Iranian violations to placate the Obama administration, and told THE WEEKLY STANDARD this week that the practice should be reversed.
David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security, told TWS that the underreporting was the IAEA’s decision, and that the Trump administration should seek to restore the scope of the agency’s reporting.
“The Trump administration should insist that the IAEA more fully report on the situation with regard to Iranian compliance with the [nuclear deal],” Albright said. “The IAEA has considerable latitude on its reporting and could include much more than it is doing today.”
“I would imagine that Amano is extremely concerned about Trump’s election and what that may mean for the IAEA,” he added. “His decision to gut the IAEA’s reporting on Iran, which he did at his own discretion, I believe in part to assuage the Obama administration, is unlikely to be viewed favorably by Trump’s folks.”
Albright’s Institute had criticized the IAEA’s underreporting when it began last February, as had Olli Heinonen, the former IAEA deputy director general and a 27-year veteran of the agency.
Heinonen told TWS this week that restoring the IAEA’s reporting would be difficult, and noted a lack of transparency about why the underreporting began.
“I hope [reporting] will change but it’s not going to be easy for the next administration,” Heinonen said. “It will take some heavy lifting to reintroduce reporting which provides a full and unbiased picture of Iran’s current nuclear activities.”
“It is not clear who requested the IAEA Secretariat to provide less detailed reports,” he continued. “Some IAEA member states have voiced … their concerns about the lack of details on which the IAEA Secretariat is basing their conclusions, but some [nuclear deal] parties, particularly Russia, have been satisfied with the new practice.”
He added that detailed reporting is critical for monitoring and verifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal.
“The reporting is there to build confidence about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” Heinonen said. “[IAEA member states] want to see the facts. They want to do their own independent assessments.”
Experts have also been critical of the IAEA’s latest quarterly report. In its November analysis of the report, the Institute for Science and International Security concluded that the IAEA left out critical details about Iran’s use of advanced centrifuges, its excess heavy water, and the country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
“The IAEA’s sparse and overly generalized reporting borders on deception by omission and is contradicted by independent reporting pointing to problems in the implementation of the [nuclear deal],” the report said.
The institute’s report added that Iranian officials had begun acting as though they did not grasp the IAEA’s requirements.
“While Iran had appeared to be following exactly what it is supposed to do with respect to the deal, increasingly, Iran has stated to inspectors that it did not understand the meaning of the requirements or acted surprised when confronted.”
