UN atomic energy chief glum on Iran

In Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency officials will meet with Iranian officials today to discuss access to a sensitive site that Western diplomats and many observers believe has been used for nuclear weapons research. The IAEA chief sounds none too sanguine: While the IAEA insists it has to exploit every opportunity to seek Iran’s cooperation, ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

In Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency officials will meet with Iranian officials today to discuss access to a sensitive site that Western diplomats and many observers believe has been used for nuclear weapons research. The IAEA chief sounds none too sanguine:

In Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency officials will meet with Iranian officials today to discuss access to a sensitive site that Western diplomats and many observers believe has been used for nuclear weapons research. The IAEA chief sounds none too sanguine:

While the IAEA insists it has to exploit every opportunity to seek Iran’s cooperation, senior agency officials spoke of low expectations ahead of Friday’s talks after years of failed efforts to persuade Iran to cooperate.

“I cannot say that I am optimistic about the outcome of the coming meeting,” IAEA chief Yuiya Amano told reporters in Helsinki, Finland, on Wednesday. “I cannot say when we can reach agreement.”

Meanwhile, as rumors continue to swirl about a possible Israeli strike before the U.S. election, Mark Hibbs points out that the IAEA may face some tough choices in terms of how its inspectors are deployed on the ground:

We might conjecture that, absent perfect foresight or guidance, if the IAEA takes seriously the threat that Israel sometime during the rest of this year might launch surprise air strikes against Iran’s enrichment plants, it would not want to put its inspectors at risk by requesting from Iran short-notice inspections at those installations. If the IAEA were to undertake an inspection at Fordow or Natanz, it might move safeguards personnel into locations which were about to be bombed in an airstrike the IAEA didn’t know was about to happen.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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