IAEA says won’t take intel at face value after Israel’s Iran statement
The UN nuclear watchdog said its independence is paramount and it does not take intelligence presented to it at face value, in an apparent response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim of a “secret atomic warehouse” in Iran.
Netanyahu – who opposes the nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that the International Atomic Energy Agency is policing – made the statement in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. He urged the IAEA to visit the site in Tehran. A US State Department official later seconded that call, Reuters reported.
“The agency sends inspectors to sites and locations only when needed. The agency uses all safeguards relevant to information available to it but it does not take any information at face value,” IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in a statement on Tuesday.
Amano’s statement made no specific reference to Israel or the statement but it is his first public pronouncement since Netanyahu’s speech. He said the IAEA has carried out socalled complementary access inspections, which are often at short notice, at all locations in Iran it has needed to visit.
“All information obtained, including from third parties, is subject to rigorous review and assessed together with other available information to arrive at an independent assessment Britain’s Boris Johnson on Tuesday launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan at a fractious party conference that came as Brussels pressed London for a compromise on leaving the EU.
Mixing jokes with biting one-liners that always stopped short of attacking May herself, the former foreign minister called her strategy “dangerous and unstable”, as well as a “political humiliation”, AFP reported.
“My fellow Conservatives, this is not democracy. This is not what we voted for. This is an outrage,” he said in a 35-minute address that was interrupted by repeated bursts of laughter and cheers.
The wide-ranging speech, which many saw as Johnson’s audition for May’s job, was attended by some 1,500 people who packed a conference hall room after queueing for hours.
Johnson did little to douse suspicions of an eventual leadership bid, using his characteristic based on the agency’s own expertise,” Amano said.
“In order to maintain credibility, the agency’s independence in relation to the implementation of verification activities is of paramount importance,” he added.
The IAEA has repeatedly announced that Iran is living up to all its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran cannot “start all over again” with United States to renegotiate a new deal after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“You remember the movie ‘50 First Dates,’ when you start all over again the following day. We can’t. This is impossible. You need to be able to have a relationship that is based on some foundations. And we have a document (the nuclear deal) that is a hundred and fifty pages long,” Zarif told the New Yorker in an exclusive interview, comparing diplomacy with the US to the 2004 movie about a man who keeps having first dates with a woman who has short-term memory loss and forgets him the next day.
Zarif did not rule out the possibility for negotiations with the US, arguing, “We live in a world of possibilities, so nothing is impossible.” However, he said Iran that when you sign something you are bound by it,” the top diplomat noted. He then cited an old Latin idiom, Pacta sunt servanda, which means “Treaties shall be complied with”, and described it as the basis of international relations.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said something similar projecting that the US can’t sustain its decision to walk away. “Sooner or later, this hasty and immature action will come to an end.”