Urge Ambassador Haley To Push For Military Site Inspections & Stronger Inspection Reporting Requirements
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA) was joined by Senators John Boozman (R-AR), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), John Barrasso (R-WY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Cory Gardner (R-CO), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Luther Strange (R-AL), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jim Risch (R-ID), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in sending a letter to United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley requesting she call on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect Iranian military facilities and strengthen reporting and verification requirements of Iran’s compliance with the Iran Nuclear Deal.
“When unveiling the JCPOA, President Obama promised that, ‘inspectors will also be able to access any suspicious location. Put simply, the organization responsible for the inspections, the IAEA, will have access where necessary, when necessary.’ He stressed that Iran’s nuclear program ‘faces strict limitations and is subject to the most intrusive inspection and verification program ever negotiated to monitor a nuclear program.’ In practice, it appears that this is not the case,” wrote the senators. Just this summer, Iranian officials stated Iran’s military sites are “off limits” and they “will never allow such visits.”
In the letter, the senators ask Ambassador Haley to work with her colleagues at the United Nations to address reporting shortcomings and vague inspection boundaries. This includes the lack of distinction between military and non-military sites in the Iran Nuclear Deal, which contributed to President Trump’s decision to not recertify the agreement. This ambiguity has prevented the IAEA from conducting comprehensive inspections. As noted in an Institute for Science and International Security review of the most recent IAEA report on Iran, “this report provides so little information” inspectors are forced to rely on intelligence reports and other information to determine if sites they have not visited are being used for activities violating the Iran Deal.
View the full text of the letter here.
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