Iran pushes back on additional nuclear scrutiny

In test of 2015 deal, Trump is reportedly calling for inspections of military sites.

TEHRAN — Iran responded angrily Thursday to reports that the Trump administration would push for inspections of military facilities to ensure Tehran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal.

“Iran will not succumb to further pressure,” Hamid Reza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst who is close to Iran’s leadership, told The Times.

Taraghi did not say whether Iran would refuse inspectors access to military facilities but insisted the Islamic Republic was complying with the agreement, which required Iran to shelve its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

President Trump has said he wants to tear up the deal and doesn’t believe Iran is complying, although his administration certified it was in a report to Congress this month.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Trump was pushing for inspections of “suspicious Iranian military sites,” either to prove that Iran was violating the deal or to force it to refuse, which could cause the agreement to collapse.

Iranian officials have argued in the past that inspections of military sites would be off-limits. But under the agreement it signed with the United States and five other world powers, Iran agreed to the so-called Additional Protocol, which allows United Nations inspectors limited access to any site where illicit nuclear activity is suspected.

Taraghi, a former lawmaker, said that the Additional Protocol allowed for snap inspections and that international inspectors had installed closed-circuit cameras in all nuclear-related facilities.

“They have access to everything going on here on the ground,” Taraghi said. “What else do they want to know?”

It was not immediately clear which military sites the Trump administration was seeking to have inspected, or whether it had evidence that Iran was breaching the terms of the deal.

U.N. inspectors monitoring Iran’s compliance had not requested access to military facilities as of July 25, according to a paper published Thursday by Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington.

“If US has good evidence of #Iran violations, then an inspection request is warranted,” Fitzpatrick tweeted. “A request designed to trap Iran into saying no isn’t.”