Iran Restricted IAEA Inspectors After Nuclear Site Attack

Forever seeing provocations in minor behavior changes, western diplomats are complaining that in recent weeks, Iran has been restricting IAEA access to nuclear sites for inspections. They termed this to be Iran “provoking us.”

In reality, Iran’s provisions of access to the IAEA are determined by a monitoring deal, and that deal has been scaled back as part of Iran limiting voluntary compliance during the Vienna talks. Even then, the reports are that this is having little impact on the IAEA, to the point that the IAEA is refusing to even comment on it.

Officially, when Iran has had to put off an inspectors’ visit, Iran has said it was because of security concerns related to Israeli sabotage attacks. The diplomats see this as an excuse, but in practice Israel has been very publicly trying to sabotage Iranian sites, and this is no doubt a very real concern for Iran.

Indeed, Israeli sabotage attacks are not only a reason for heightened Iranian security going forward, but also a big part of why Iran has scaled back international cooperation in protest. This is a major ongoing concern, and assuring Iranian security  from Israeli attacks would be a big way of returning to a normal monitoring schedule.