Iran is ready to give the UN nuclear agency access to its Parchin military base once agreement is reached on how to proceed on clarifying all issues, Tehran’s mission to the IAEA said Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in November that it suspected Iran had carried out high-explosives tests in a large metal container at Parchin near Tehran, relevant to developing nuclear weapons. “Considering the fact that it is a military site, granting access is a time-consuming process and cannot be permitted repeatedly,” the Iranian embassy to the IAEA in Vienna said in a statement. It said it had requested that the IAEA “combine all related issues … and then once more, access would be granted” and that the “process could be obviously started” once there is agreement on how to resolve all issues. It also said that in talks in Vienna in between two high-level watchdog visits this year to Iran, it had been agreed that the agency’s request to visit Parchin would be “postponed” until after this week’s IAEA board of governors meeting. The IAEA has however made no mention of any such agreement, saying after the second recent visit on February 22 that it had asked during both trips for access to Parchin but that Iran “did not
grant permission.”
