International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Yukiya Amano said at a press conference in Vienna on Monday that he would not address allegations that Iran has allegedly pursued a secret nuclear weapons program in the past without fully owning up to its violations.
Asked about past military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program – which it may have hidden from the IAEA – Amano said, “for the PMD issues, I do not speculate.”
In past statements, when he was pressed to address voluminous evidence gathered by the Mossad in January 2018 of Iran’s secret nuclear program to build five atomic bombs, he said that the IAEA needed more time to evaluate the evidence.
Amano’s statement on Monday may have indicated that time is no longer the issue and that the IAEA has simply decided it will flat out ignore the evidence, which the Mossad appropriated in a daring operation from inside a clandestine facility within the heart of Tehran itself.
He also said that there had been formal resolutions which had the IAEA following the PMD issue until the end of 2015, but not beyond that point.
In other words, Amano explained that at this point, the agency would focus only on monitoring and verifying whether Iran was keeping commitments it made as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA), and was no longer concerned with whether Iran had lied about secretly seeking nuclear weapons before 2015.
Critics have argued that by the end of 2015, Iran had only answered some troubling questions raised by the IAEA about PMD, but left other serious questions unanswered.
In contrast to Amano’s approach, the US and Israel have argued that the Islamic republic’s maintenance of such a massive archive indicates an intent to return to pursuing nuclear weapons in the future.
Head of the Institute for Science and International Security David Albright told The Jerusalem Post in February that most countries which have entered a process of denuclearization also destroyed their nuclear archives to make a clear break with any idea of returning to seeking nuclear weapons.
Documents in the archive obtained by the Mossad also undermine Tehran’s claim that its ongoing ballistic missile testing is unrelated to nuclear weapons, as aspects of the documents discuss a drive toward mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.CORRECTION: This article originally quoted Amano as having said, “for the PMD issues, I do not speak of it.” This was incorrect. It has been corrected to reflect that he said, “for the PMD issues, I do not speculate.”