Iran Denies Existence of Nuclear Site in Marivan, Kurdistan

Iran's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has dismissed the agency's reference to "strong explosive tests" at a nuclear site in the Marivan region of Kurdistan as "fake," stating that no such site exists. The Iranian representative also announced that Iran is willing to allow "managed access" to this "alleged" site "exceptionally and voluntarily" just once. According to the state news agency IRNA, Reza Najafi, Iran's representative at the IAEA, emphasized during a quarterly meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors that Iran is ready to demonstrate that the claims made in the agency's November 2011 report are baseless and fabricated by allowing managed access to the alleged site in Marivan. Mr. Najafi added that the country that provided false information to the IAEA has not disclosed the location of the site because, in reality, such a place does not exist. He also called on "that claiming country, the United States or Israel," to provide the coordinates of the alleged site to the IAEA. According to Mr. Najafi, the IAEA claimed in its November 2011 report, based on "information provided by one country," that "extensive strong explosive tests were conducted by Iran in the Marivan region." As reported by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), Mr. Najafi also stated that the Marivan region covers more than two thousand square kilometers, and such alleged tests would be easily identifiable if the site were visited. Meanwhile, the spokesperson for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization stated on Thursday, November 29, that the new IAEA report refers to "past issues" and does not mention recent meetings. According to the Mehr News Agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for this organization, clarified: "We have provided more information to the IAEA, but the agency wants new issues to be clarified. This report does not contain anything new and is identical to the report from two weeks ago." The Director General of the IAEA reiterated on Thursday morning, November 29, that the Islamic Republic has failed to respond to ambiguities regarding its suspicious nuclear research. The agency announced that Tehran has not answered two sensitive questions regarding research suspected to have been conducted in the past that could be related to the development of nuclear weapons. The two issues referenced in the agency's report on November 16 are the matter of "detonator tests" and "computer simulations related to nuclear explosions," which the agency says Tehran has not yet responded to. Iran had committed to answering these questions by the third of Shahrivar last year. The report identified the location of detonator tests as the Parchin military site outside Tehran and states that satellite images since the release of the November 2011 report and the IAEA's request for inspection of this military site show that the Islamic Republic has completely destroyed or altered some buildings in that area.