Netanyahu, IAEA Trade Barbs Over Iran Nuclear Site

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) engaged in a war of words on Tuesday over whether or not the IAEA inspected the Iran nuclear site that Netanyahu publicly revealed on Sept. 27.

Netanyahu has accused the IAEA of failing to inspect the site, a claim that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano rejected.

“The Agency uses all safeguards relevant information available to it but it does not take any information at face value,” Amano said in an Oct. 2 statement. “In line with established safeguards practices, all information obtained, including from third parties, is subject to rigorous review and assessed together with other available information to arrive at an independent assessment based on the Agency’s own expertise. It is not the practice of the Agency to publicly discuss issues related to any such information.”

Amano added that “evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities for Iran remain ongoing.”

“The Agency continues to evaluate Iran’s declarations under the Additional Protocol, and has conducted complementary accesses under the Additional Protocol to all the sites and locations in Iran which it needed to visit,” Amano said.

Netanyahu responded with a statement of his own:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office:
"The IAEA relates to inspections that it carried out in various places in Iran but it does not relate to the specific site in Turquzabad which Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to in his UN speech.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 2, 2018

There is no reason to wait. The IAEA must inspect the site and immediately dispatch monitors with Geiger counters and the Prime Minister's words will be seen as verifiably true.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 2, 2018

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in an Oct. 2 press conference that Israel will eventually release information about additional Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran has denied that the facility Netanyahu revealed is a nuclear site.