The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has put out a statement confirming completion of its inquiries into evidence that Iran may have experimented on nuclear weapons design in the past. Now under a road map agreed with Iran, the agency has until December 15 to analyse and write up its findings.



Completion of the IAEA enquiry is a precondition for the comprehensive nuclear deal - between Iran, the US and five other major powers in Vienna in July - to go ahead, limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. But according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal, the Iranians had been dragging their heels until just before today’s deadline.

Until last week, [Western diplomats] say, Iran had tightly restricted access to key people and places and offered few new explanations of its past nuclear work. It continued to stand largely behind its customary answer that much of the evidence amassed by the agency that Tehran once sought to develop nuclear weapons technology was forged. “It was the degree of cooperation we expected,” one senior Western diplomat said, “which was minimalist.”

As part of the inquiry, the IAEA director general, Yukiya Amano, and his head of inspections were allowed in to the sprawling Parchin military base last month to visit a building where Iranian technicians are alleged to have tested high explosive components for a nuclear warhead more than a decade ago. Also environmental samples from the base were handed over to the IAEA by Iranian nuclear workers. The sampling was highly controversial as the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation claimed it had been done without IAEA officials being present.

However Amano insisted the sampling process was not compromised, saying:



The agency can confirm the integrity of the sampling process and the authenticity of the samples. The process was carried out under our responsibility and monitoring.

The two claims seemed at face value to be incompatible. How could the sampling be under IAEA responsibility and monitoring if no IAEA experts were there?



The issue is vitally important. In testing explosives for nuclear warheads, technicians typically use tiny quantities of fissile material (highly enriched uranium HEU or plutonium), leaving behind radioactive traces. Iran has done a fair bit of re-landscaping of the Parchin zone under scrutiny, including refurbishment of the building in question, but experts say that given the sophistication of the IAEA’s equipment, it would be hard to remove all traces.



Part of the background to this story was the periodic intervention in the nuclear negotiations by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. In public statements, Khamenei wold sometimes lay down red lines that seemed to make agreement impossible. In early April for example, he declared that all sanctions would have lifted on the day the deal was signed and no inspectors would be allowed into military sites. But the Iranians negotiators knew that Iran would have to dismantle a significant part of its nuclear capacity before sanctions could be lifted, and that Parchin and possibly other military sites would have to be examined to comply with the IAEA’s inquiry.

So the diplomats and experts contrived ingenious work-arounds that seemed to preserve the Leader’s diktat while making the necessary compromises. One of the reasons the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is so complex are the various detours and zigzags that had to be made to get round Supreme Leader various declamations.



The deal was structured so that it would only be considered final on Implementation Day, on which a large chunk of sanctions will be lifted. But Iran will start dismantling well ahead of that time, on Adoption Day, which falls this coming Sunday, 90 days after the JCPOA was adopted by the UN security council. In a similar spirit, Amano and his deputy could be classified as foreign dignitaries rather than inspectors for the Parchin visit.



As for the sampling, a method had to be found to try to preserve the scientific integrity of the process, while not bypassing the Supreme Leader’s edicts. It is thought this involved a video feed to IAEA inspectors while sampling was conducted, but it is not clear whether this was in real time or recorded. The opacity over the methods used has made Amano a target for critics of the deal, particularly in the US and Israel, and that hostile scrutiny will intensify dramatically on December 15, when his report to the IAEA board will be dissected for signs of fudge and whitewash. It will be a pivotal day for the agency.

Meanwhile the JCPOA juggernaut moves on. It was pushed through the Iranian Majlis and Guardian Council this week in time for Adoption Day on Sunday. Meanwhile, work in Brussels and Washington is said to be finished or nearing completion on sanctions relief measures ahead of the Sunday deadline. They will detail the lifting of sanctions, and the complicated new procurement regime under which Iran will be able to pursue a civil nuclear programme, all of which will come into effect on Implementation Day.



When that days comes depends on how fast Iran can shrink its nuclear programme. It has to yank the core out of its heavy water reactor at Arak and fill it with concrete. It has to shift thousands of centrifuges from enrichment plants in Natanz and Fordow into a storage site in Natanz in such a way that the delicate rotor mechanisms are not damaged, if it ever wants to use them again. And it has to reduce its current stockpile of low enriched uranium from 7,500 kg to 300 kg, either by dilution to natural uranium or by export (most likely to Russia. Discussions between the Iranians and Russians on this are said to be growing in intensity).

President Hassan Rouhani wants to get all this done before Iranian parliamentary elections on February 26, so he can persuade voters that better times are on the way as they go to the polls. It is a tall order, but not impossible - perhaps not as hard as the IAEA’s task over the next two months to craft a report that preserves the hard-won JCPOA deal while not sacrificing its own integrity and legitimacy.

