UN inspectors said to accompany Iranians on inspections

United Nations inspectors will accompany Iranian officials to take samples at a key military facility under the terms of a secret bilateral deal, according to a Reuters report on Friday.

Teams of technicians from both Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will jointly inspect the Parchin military facility, one anonymous Western diplomat told the news agency. Those inspections will be recorded, they added. 

{mosads}”The IAEA will be present when the Iranians take the samples,” they said. “This approach to managed access is something that’s fairly standard in the IAEA toolbox. Nothing to worry about really.”

The presence of the international inspectors alongside the Iranian technicians would undercut concerns about some aspects of the Iranian nuclear agreement, which have risen to the forefront during the congressional debate over the pact.

A draft copy of the secret “side deal” between Iran and the IAEA published by the Associated Press earlier this summer indicated that Iranian officials would take the lead on inspections at the Parchin military facility. 

However, the new Reuters report cites two anonymous Western diplomats saying that, instead, IAEA officials will be right alongside those Iranians.

The second official said that the arrangement is the product of “a compromise so the Iranians could save face and the IAEA could ensure it carried out its inspections according to their strict requirements.”

Iran is believed to use the Parchin site to test detonators for nuclear devices.   

Top officials have previously criticized the draft agreement published by AP, and they are likely to point to the Reuters story as justification.

IAEA head Yukiya Amano previously criticized the AP report as a “misrepresentation,” but declined to go into details about the actual text of the arrangement.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) also said this summer that she would have opposed the pact if the AP story had been true. However, she received “a thorough and classified briefing about the intricate process the IAEA has in place” to inspect Iran’s potential militarization of its nuclear program, which “satisfied my deep alarm over this issue.”

Lawmakers in both parties have repeatedly pressed to see the full text of the agreement, but have been continually rebuffed. The IAEA has asserted that secrecy is an integral component of its work, and warned that revealing the bilateral deal to members of Congress would undermine its independent nature.

Criticism about the continued secrecy has only increased, however.

On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly voted to accuse the Obama administration of breaking the law by failing to hand over the secret Iran-IAEA agreements, since the White House is required to give Congress every document related to the deal.