The IAEA announced that the UN will inspect an Iranian military site that the US believes was used for nuclear weaponization activities:

The inspection will be part of the U.N. investigation into allegations Iran has carried out work linked to nuclear 'weaponization,' the process of testing or assembling a warhead and attaching it to a delivery system. ...

According to globalsecurity.org, a Web Site run by a private Washington-based research group, the massive Parchin complex, around 30 km (19 miles) south of Tehran, is the center of Iran's munitions industry.

Officials from the United States and several other countries said in September that Parchin may be a site where Iran was testing explosives that would be appropriate for an atom bomb.

Although ElBaradei played down the U.S. allegations at the time, agency inspectors asked Tehran to visit the site. They want to take environmental samples to rule out the possibility that Iran had been working with nuclear materials at Parchin.

Either Iran has cleaned up Parchin or the intelligence was faulty. The mullahcracy would not risk detection with a voluntary inspection. The US and the EU-3 also know this, so perhaps the UN and IAEA will look for other indicators at Parchin. I suspect, however, that the end result of this inspection will be a public-relations win for Iran.

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» Iranian Site Will Be Inspected from Powerpundit
The UN is going to be inspecting the Iranian Parchin facility, suspected as an area Iran may be testing materials that could be used with atomic weapons. Agreed, that they would not risk detection during a voluntary inspection. I bet they clean it up w... [Read More]

Tracked on January 5, 2005 8:36 PM

» Weapons inspections do not work from INCITE
Weapons inspections had the potential to work in Iraq when the program was first instituted. The reason they could have worked is that Iraq had just suffered a military defeat and surrendered. As part of the surrender, Iraq ceded many aspects of its ... [Read More]

Tracked on January 6, 2005 2:03 AM