Republican lawmakers are steaming over an
Associated Press report uncovering a secret deal, included in the broader Iran nuclear proliferation agreement, that allows Tehran to conduct its own inspections at a site long believed to have been used for nuclear development.
Trusting Iran to operate on the honor system is "worse than putting the fox in charge of the hen house," Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, told
Politico. "It ultimately involves Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon that can be sent to destroy American cities."
Presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Scott Walker also blasted the news, with the former Florida governor characterizing it as a "farce," while Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, fingered the clandestine deal as yet another example of dangerous, short-sighted policy decisions by the Obama administration.
"The more we learn about the Obama-Clinton Iran deal, the worse it gets," he said in a statement. "Allowing Iran to inspect its own alleged nuclear sites puts trust in a fanatical regime that’s cheated for decades and hates everything we stand for."
For years, Iran has denied inspectors access to the Parchin nuclear site and insisted it is not developing nuclear weapons, but intelligence gleaned from the U.S., Israel and other sources — which includes satellite images showing possible attempts to sanitize the site — indicate otherwise, according to the AP.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), according to the wire service, suspects that Tehran "may have experimented with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms."
Despite demands by lawmakers for the administration to provide the documents detailing the Parchin deal, the White House has taken the posture that it’s between the IAEA and Tehran, and Congress would need to take it up with the IAEA.
"We are confident in the agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program, issues that in some cases date back more than a decade," said National Security Council spokesman Ned Price. "The IAEA has separately developed the most robust inspection regime ever peacefully negotiated to ensure Iran’s current program remains exclusively peaceful."
The IAEA reportedly briefed the U.S. and the other world powers on the Parchin agreement, which allows Tehran to "employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons."
"Trusting Iran to inspect its own nuclear site and report to the U.N. in an open and transparent way is remarkably naive and incredibly reckless," Senate Whip John Cornyn of Texas told Politico. "This revelation only reinforces the deep-seated concerns the American people have about the agreement."
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