When IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano flew yesterday to Tehran to negotiate a deal with Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, he might have had the hope that his inspectors would get access to the military site at Parchin where clandestine experiments with high explosives might have been done a decade ago (indicating that Iran’s nuclear program once in fact had a “military dimension”) and which had been effectively sanitized in recent years. That turned out to be an illusion. A road map was agreed upon, according to which the IAEA might get access to the uranium mine Gchine near the southern city of Bandar Abbas and the Arak heavy-water reactor (which, after further negotiations with P5+1 next week in Geneva might never go online). Depending, of course, upon P5+1 and Iran talks. Salehi has cultivated a special enmity with Amano who had visited Tehran last year, also in vain as regards Parchin.

The Iranians are once again smart enough to snub Amano after the torpedoed, by French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, historic deal over its nuclear program, which can be sold at home as Ashura moment and clearly indicates once more that the West does not play fair with Iran. The deal with P5+1 will be done later. The presence of so many foreign ministers in Geneva including John Kerry, and Benjamin Netanhahu’s wrath must have been a great satisfaction for Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, one could see it in his face.

11 November 2013 @ 6:27 pm.

Last modified November 15, 2013.