The agreement to inspect Iran’s nuclear research site at Parchin is faulty and hurts the credibility of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, its former deputy director general said today.

Olli Heinonen, the former number two official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), expressed doubts that the inspections plan is strong enough in an interview with The Times of Israel.

“The key question is: will the IAEA be present during the sample-taking or not?” Heinonen wondered. “It looks to me that they might be witnessing the sample-taking through some camera view, or from a distance. If that’s really the case I have a lot of reservations about the reasonability and credibility of the arrangements.”

Heinonen — who worked for the IAEA for nearly three decades and headed the agency’s Department of Safeguards — explained that taking samples at a site suspected of having hosted illicit nuclear activity is no simple feat.

“You need to know what you sample, how you sample, and if the sample is representative of the object you sample,” he said. It’s difficult to assess changes that might have been done to the facility — such as the installation of false walls or efforts to hide or sanitize equipment — by merely looking at photo or video material. “You need to be present and see physically the place. Therefore, for the IAEA to do a credible job they need to get to that chamber and take independently their samples.”

Because of the weaknesses in the inspections plan, the IAEA must reveal the details of the secret side deals that govern those inspections, Heinonen argued. As he had pointed out previously, Heinonen said that any nation belonging to the IAEA’s Board of Governors can request the publication of such arrangements if they feel it is necessary to understand a given verification process. Given that there appears to be neither confidential nor proprietary information involved, such a request could be made regarding the Parchin arrangements. Heinonen pointed out that Canada has asked for the publication of secret side deals in the past.

Iran has been adamant about not allowing publication of the side deals. A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran suggested last month that IAEA director general Yukiya Amano “would have been harmed” had he disclosed details of the side deals.

[Photo: AJC Berlin / YouTube ]