Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz earlier this week played down congressional concerns about secret “side deals” between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying it was “standard practice” for the IAEA and individual countries not to make such documents public.
“This is pretty standard,” he told the Huffington Post Live show, referring to an Iran-IAEA agreement concluded as part of the overall deal reached between Tehran and the P5+1 negotiating partners, but which has not been submitted to the congressional review of that deal.
“This is the way the agency works with countries,” he said. “If countries choose to make the documents public, then the IAEA of course can do so.”
The IAEA-Iran agreement reportedly deals with how Iran will satisfy the UN nuclear watchdog’s unresolved questions about past and possibly present nuclear activity that may have military applications.
Resolving the so-called “possible military dimension” (PMD) issues is a crucial part of the overall agreement but U.S. lawmakers will now not be able to review how that is to be done.
According to remarks made in an open hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week – and not disputed by Secretary of State John Kerry or Moniz at the time – the secret side deal includes an agreement for the Iranians themselves to provide the IAEA with samples from Parchin, a military complex southeast of Tehran where Iran is suspected to have carried out nuclear-related tests. (Iran has for years refused to allow IAEA inspectors access to Parchin, and there have been signs of cover-ups there.)
In explaining the confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran, Moniz recalled a similar one between the agency and South Africa in the early 1990s.
“A good example would be, the IAEA went through the whole dismantling of the South African program a few decades ago, and those documents remain confidential,” he said.
(South Africa’s white minority government had a nuclear weapons capability, and dismantled its bombs with IAEA certification; Iran by contrast claims not to have any military component to its nuclear energy program.)
Moniz reiterated that the administration does not have the Iran-IAEA documents either.
“I can assure you, and I’ve assured the Congress, that we also are not in possession of those documents. But we have confidence that the IAEA of course has to maintain the integrity of its reputation, the integrity of the process …” he said.
During last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) raised the alleged Parchin provision in the secret side deal, and ridiculed the notion that the Iranians would be trusted to provide samples themselves.
“What you guys agreed to,” he told Kerry, Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew,” was, we can’t even take samples there. The IAEA can’t take samples there. They [the Iranians] are going to be able to test by themselves….”
“How in the world can you have a nation like Iran doing their own testing?” Risch asked. “This is absolutely ludicrous.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) appeared stunned.
“Is it true that the Iranians are going to be able to take the samples, as Sen. Risch said?” he asked Kerry. “Because chain of custody means nothing if at the very beginning what you’re given is chosen and derived by the perpetrator.”
Kerry replied that “that is a classified component of this – it’s supposed to be discussed in a classified session. We’re perfectly prepared to fully brief you in classified session with respect to what will happen.”
“It is part of a confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran as to how they do that,” he said. “The IAEA has said that they are satisfied, that they will be able to do this in a way that does not compromise their needs, and that adequately gets the answers that they need.”