Menendez told Kerry that if it was true that Iran would provide the IAEA with the Parchin samples, “that would be the equivalent of the fox guarding the chicken coop.”
On July 14 the P5+1 group – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – announced it had reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran over its nuclear program.
On the same day, Iran and the IAEA signed a document called the “roadmap for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program.”
In a joint statement at the time, IAEA director general Yukiya Amano and Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization president Ali Akhbar Salehi referred, without elaboration, to “a separate arrangement that would allow them to address the remaining outstanding issues,” as well as “another separate arrangement regarding the issue of Parchin.”
Lawmakers are unhappy that the administration did not provide Congress with the Iran-IAEA documents, along with the other documentation relating to the JCPOA.
Bipartisan legislation signed by President Obama last May requires the administration to provide Congress with the JCPOA itself, plus “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) have sent a letter to Obama instructing him to submit the side deals to Congress in line with the legislation.
“The law is clear,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “But the administration has not submitted the side agreements between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran to the Senate, withholding the text from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.”
“Congress cannot properly carry out its obligation to the American people until the administration fulfills its legal obligation to the American people, and to Congress,” he said. “We’re calling on the administration to do so immediately.”
The administration disputes that the Iran-IAEA documents constitute side agreements that are being kept secret.
“Congress has what we have, and what’s being asked for here are IAEA documents or material that is not in our possession,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
“There’s no side deals; there’s no secret deals, between Iran and the IAEA, that the P5+1 has not been briefed on in detail.”
(CNSNews)