Experts Urge Release of Details of IAEA Inspection at Iran Site

"Several nuclear security experts are urging the United Nations nuclear watchdog and world powers to release details of how a sensitive Iranian military site will be inspected as part of a landmark nuclear deal reached in July.

The experts, with long experience in international weapons inspections, said the failure to disclose the details was damaging the credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...

The confidential plan for the Parchin site has led to differing reports on how it will be carried out, with some critics of the U.S. administration saying Iran had been given too much leeway to conduct its own inspections, including taking samples. The inspections are needed to resolve questions about whether Iran did research in the past at Parchin related to building a nuclear weapon.

David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, expressed unease about the lack of public details on the arrangement.

'(Details) should be released because it's undermining the IAEA's credibility,' Albright said. 'Whatever the outcome of the sampling, the secrecy makes it harder to determine whether it's a credible sampling approach.'

Former IAEA deputy director-general Olli Heinonen, now at Harvard University, said the secrecy could not be justified.

'This is a very unusual IAEA verification approach, which has no reason to be confidential unless a very special reason - proprietary, economic or security - calls for it,' he said..."