Monday, August 10, 2015

Iran Does NOT Have 21 Days to Hide Evidence at a Site

So some who criticize the recent agreement with Iran have said that Iran can delay access to a site of interest to inspectors for 21 days.

Turns out this is wrong.
Let’s get this straight. The agreement calls for continuous monitoring at all of Iran’s declared sites — that means all of the time — including centrifuge workshops, which are not safeguarded anywhere else in the world. Inspectors have immediate access to these sites.

That leaves the problem of possible undeclared sites. What happens when the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects that prohibited work is occurring at an undeclared site?...

Far from giving Iran 24 days, the IAEA will need to give only 24 hours’ notice before showing up at a suspicious site to take samples. Access could even be requested with as little as two hours’ notice, something that will be much more feasible now that Iran has agreed to let inspectors stay in-country for the long term. Iran is obligated to provide the IAEA access to all such sites...

What opponents of the deal have done is add up all the time limits and claim that inspections will occur only after a 24-day pause. This is simply not true. (Jeffrey Lewis, Chuck Schumer’s Disingenuous Iran Deal Argument, Foreign Policy, August 9, 2015. Emphasis in original.)
So it can be seen that the situation is very different from what that claim states.

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