Possible Solutions Regarding Sampling from Parchin

According to the Associated Press, based on a document it claims to have seen, access to Parchin will be managed, and sampling will be conducted by Iran. Although Parchin is not a nuclear facility, its name is intertwined with the fabric of Iran's nuclear program. Over the years, whenever there has been talk of monitoring this program, the question has arisen as to whether inspectors have access to Parchin or not. Before the announcement of the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group in Vienna on July 14, Yukiya Amano announced in front of the historic Coburg Hotel that an agreement with Iran had been reached. This agreement publicly announced the timeline of cooperation between Iran and the agency, and one questionable issue arose: again Parchin, which based on the public text of the agreement stated that confidential arrangements would be made between Iran and the agency regarding this facility. This compromise was achieved following Yukiya Amano's visit to Tehran during the final round of negotiations in Vienna. During that visit, Mr. Amano met not only with the President of Iran but also with Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which is the main body responsible for Iran's nuclear file. Now, the Associated Press writes that although the confidential document was not signed, the name of Ali Hosseini Tash, the strategic deputy of this council, is seen at the bottom of it. Previously, agreements between Iran and the agency were generally signed by the head of the Atomic Energy Organization, the Iranian representative at the agency, or an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this regard, Radio Farda has interviewed Tarek Raouf, the disarmament program director at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Mr. Raouf was the head of the Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2002 to 2011 and was responsible for the files of Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, South Korea, and Syria during this time. Mr. Raouf, you led a delegation that conducted talks for Iran's accession to the Additional Protocol. As a result, you were aware of previous visits to Parchin. Is that correct? Tarek Raouf: Yes. This was also part of the work done by the group that wrote reports on Iran. The agency has visited Parchin, but this facility is very extensive, and there are still questions from the agency that need to be answered. Therefore, the agency must also reach an agreement with Iran in this regard. This is to resolve the PMD issue or the possibly military aspect of Iran's nuclear program, which must be completed by December 15. In recent weeks, several non-proliferation experts that Radio Farda has consulted have said that it is unlikely that Iran will conduct the sampling itself, and it has not happened in the past. What is your opinion on this? Does it seem logical that the agency would allow Iran to do this? First, we must understand that access to Parchin by the agency does not occur under normal conditions because this facility is not nuclear. If the agency conducts environmental sampling at Natanz, Fordow, or Bushehr, it is done under the agency's safeguards, and it can do whatever it wants. However, when we talk about military facilities like Parchin, where the agency can access it in a managed way, the procedure is somewhat different. We do not know what agreement has been made, and we only hear from the media, but it is not unreasonable that Iran may have requested to conduct the work in the presence of agency inspectors, using agency sampling equipment and bags, while the agency inspectors can observe this process. Why do you think Iran might want to do this itself? This is not very strange. One reason for Iran's concern could be that sometimes the protective covers that inspectors wear may have been previously covered in a contaminated location and could transfer uranium. This has happened before; it is not very common, but it has occurred. Another reason is to reassure critics and opponents within Iran. Therefore, if Iranian technicians use the agency's sampling equipment, and the agency says samples should be taken from doors, ground, or devices or cracks in the wall and placed inside the agency's bags, it is almost like what we see at airports, and brought to Vienna, it would not create a problem for the environmental sampling process. The hard part of sampling comes when it reaches the laboratory, and the analysis of samples for finding traces of uranium or plutonium begins. Now, after the agreement, we know that the issue of Parchin and managed access is a sensitive topic among critics in both Iran and the U.S. Was there no way for the Iran-agency agreement to remain less rigidly confidential? The agency's safeguards with countries are a legal document and have their own laws. A country can request that part or all of the agreement remain confidential. In this regard, Iran has requested that the agreement be confidential. The director-general of the agency has not yet informed the Board of Governors either, which I think is a mistake. Because the director-general cannot receive orders from any member state, and if he accepts an invitation from a legislative body of the agency's members, it could be said that he has acted in a discriminatory manner, and the agency's law does not allow this. And certainly, this will be discussed in the next Board of Governors meeting. The next meeting, which will be held on August 24, is expected to focus on both the agreement and the financial impacts of inspections and oversight on Iran's program. Yes, the director-general has requested this meeting. He has prepared a document estimating the budget needed for the agency to monitor and verify Iran's nuclear program, which the Board of Governors must approve. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is separate from the agency's safeguards, and therefore the Board of Governors must allow the director-general to work on the JCPOA as well. The council must also approve where the necessary budget comes from. This budget must be provided by the six countries that negotiated with Iran and the European Union and does not come from the agency's regular budget. However, it is unclear how the director-general intends to inform the Board of Governors about the roadmap for verifying current and past actions and Parchin. Next week's meeting will focus more on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the budget needed for it.