Nuclear Watchdog Ignores Iranian Coverup

The daring Mossad operation that succeeded in exposing a secret nuclear-development archive in Iran has apparently not impressed the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said on Monday that he has chosen to officially ignore Israeli and American allegations of a massive Iranian coverup of its nuclear program with incriminating evidence that they sought to build weapons, not just reactors for civilian use.

Asked about at a press conference in Vienna about “PMD,” or past military dimensions, of Iran’s nuclear program which it may have concealed from IAEA inspectors, Amano said, “for the PMD issues, I do not speak of it.”

Amano also disclosed that there had been formal resolutions which had the IAEA following the PMD issue until the end of 2015, but not beyond that point. From then on, the IAEA has confined its work to monitoring and verifying whether Iran was complying with the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). Whatever had gone on covertly before that was not the agency’s concern, he explained.

As such, the IAEA policy runs directly counter to that of the U.S. and Israel, which have been demanding further scrutiny of Iranian nuclear programs before 2015. Iran critics argue that the fact the country has maintained these secret archives past that date belies its claim that it has no intention of building a bomb.