The inspectors found that Iran’s nuclear program was “suitable for the coordination of a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” and that its experiments have “characteristics relevant to a nuclear explosive device”.
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Following the IAEA’s report, USA announced its readiness to close PMD, however French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal has urged for precise answers to the question concerning Iran’s work related to nuclear weapons. Tehran says it will implement a nuclear agreement signed with six world powers in July once the file is completely closed.
The report on the so-called PMD (possible military dimensions) in Iran’s nuclear program, which was released on Wednesday by the IAEA, confirmed that the agency has no credible indications of suspicious work in Tehran’s nuclear activities.
Iranian state media reports say the country’s top nuclear official, Ali Akbar Salehi, praised the IAEA’s findings, saying the case related to Iran’s past and present nuclear activities could now be closed. Since 2003, the IAEA has informed the board about what it has learned about Iran’s nuclear program, including activities that Iran tried to hide from the IAEA.
“The information available to the Agency, including the results of the sampling analysis and the satellite imagery, does not support Iran’s statements on the goal of the building”, the IAEA report said.
“Faced with such outright Iranian efforts to deceive the inspectors, the IAEA broke relatively little new ground”, an assessment from the Institute for Science and International Security concluded.
In a letter Thursday to President Obama, Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and ranking Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland said they plan to call Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to testify on the deal’s implementation, along with other administration officials.
However, Misztal said Iran failed to come clean about the full scope of its activities, including a full disclosure of all of the facilities that were used and the names of all of the scientists who conducted experiments.
A bipartisan pair of senators is pledging a “rigorous” oversight of the Iran nuclear deal before the agreement is formally implemented. The diplomatic pact sets limits on Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for rolling back sanctions on its oil and financial sectors.
When the IAEA verifies Iran’s compliance with provisions, which include reducing its overall uranium enrichment capacity and making significant modifications to its Arak heavy water reactor, the two sides will move to Implementation Day.
The agency is also convinced that extensive computer modelling of a nuclear explosive device was carried out both prior to 2004 and between 2005 and 2009.
As part of this roadmap, Iran was to take a number of steps before October 15, 2015, and the IAEA had to subsequently provide its final assessment to resolve all the “past and present outstanding issues” by December 15, 2015.
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In its probe, the IAEA learned nothing new about an alleged test of a ballistic nuclear trigger that Iran “may have planned and undertaken” in 2002 or 2003, also basing its conclusions on information received before 2011.
