The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran have issued a joint statement today announcing seven new “practical steps” on answering questions about Iran’s long-standing civilian nuclear program, and any potential dual-use technologies researched alongside it.
At the center of this will be answering questions about Iran’s pre-2003 program, and allegations of explosives testing that might conceivably be used to set off a nuclear charge.
Iran has conducted a lot of explosives testing of this sort, but the detonators from such a test could also be used in oil extraction operations, an unsurprising thing for oil-rich Iran to be working on at any rate.
Answering the questions would be another confidence-builder amid negotiations for a final nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1, though with no real evidence of Iranian wrongdoing the fact that they are still being presented with demands for such measures many years into the investigation leaves many wondering if they’ll ever be done “probing” Iran.