IAEA Rebuffs Netanyahu Demand for Iran Inspection

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued an apparent stiff rebuff of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s call for an urgent inspection of a “secret atomic warehouse” in Iran.

“The agency sends inspectors to sites and locations only when needed. The agency uses all safeguards relevant to information available to it but it does not take any information at face value,” IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in a statement on Tuesday.

Amano’s statement made no specific reference to Israel or the statement but it is his first public pronouncement since Netanyahu’s speech. He said the IAEA has carried out so-called complementary access inspections, which are often at short notice, at all locations in Iran it has needed to visit.

“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,” Amano said.

Netanyahu called on the IAEA to inspect Iran’s nuclear sites in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

“The IAEA still has not taken any action. It has not posed a single question of Iran. It has not demanded to inspect a single new site discovered in that secret archive,” the prime minister charged.

Netanyahu backed up his charges with photos and maps of the building in question, which he said was adjacent to a rug cleaning facility. He said that Iranian officials had already removed over 30 pounds of radioactive material from the secret structure.