Iran Demands Veto Power Over Choice of Inspectors
And the worthless deal will become even more worthless.
August 18, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
As I predicted, Iran is going to game every single aspect of the deal. Anything that wasn't firmly nailed down will be turned into a debate. Anything that was will be checked for loopholes, complaints will be filed and the process will be dragged on for as long as possible.
Iran will do this to exploit opportunities, but also to exhaust and wear down the other side.
So now Iran wants veto power over inspectors. This is a serious issue because while Iran's intelligence reach is limited, Russia still has a sizable global network, and getting the wrong people in there would be disastrous. As a reminder, there's the Scott Ritter case, his Russian connections and his pedophilia bust. If Iran gets its way, it's going to be able to spend a lot of time dragging out the process by rejecting possible candidates, and it's going to have the opportunity to get people in there who are already compromised by its ally in Moscow.
A senior Iranian official declared on Monday that international nuclear inspectors would only be permitted into the country once they receive approval from the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry, putting another roadblock between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran’s contested nuclear sites.
Sayyed Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and one of the top negotiators in talks that led to the recently inked nuclear deal, told the country’s state-controlled press that Iran’s intelligence apparatus must approve of any inspector who is issued a visa to enter Iran.
This requirement could complicate efforts to prove to the world that Iran is being fully transparent and that nuclear inspectors inside the country are neutral.
Iran has already stated that no American inspector would be permitted into the country under the deal. The accord also grants Iran a 24-day notice period before inspectors enter any site suspected of being used for nuclear weapons work.
And of course nothing stops Iran from rejecting an inspector it already approved, by throwing some sort of last minute tantrum, which will drag on the process even longer.
None of this is conspiratorial. These kinds of games have been played for a long time by totalitarian states looking to game the system. The Soviets drove American diplomats crazy with them. And while everyone is debating procedures, Iran will have hidden undisclosed aspects of its nuclear program running and being moved around.
And the worthless deal will become even more worthless.
