UN Inspectors in Iran Throw Up Their Hands

Reuters
Dino Grandoni 1,010 Views Feb 22, 2012

It's official: The United Nations nuclear inspections many thought Iran wouldn't let happen, didn't happen. The International Atomic Energy Agency's announced that Iran wouldn't grant UN inspectors access to Parchin, the place where Iran tests all those missiles it insists are not for nukes. The agency's press release on the matter was awfully curt ("terse" as The New York Times put it), which had reporters from APBloomberg, and elsewhere cornering Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA's chief inspector, in Vienna's airport for elaboration. “We couldn’t get access and we couldn’t finalize a way forward" he said after two days of meetings trying to convince Iranian officials to allow him and fellow inspectors to see the missile site."It would now be up to the 35-nation IAEA board to decide on a response when it meets starting March 5," reports the AP.

And with Iran blocking inspectors' access to the missile site, it's hard to believe Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he reiterates, as he did today, that "we are not seeking nuclear weapons," The Guardian reports. Especially only one day after the Iranian military went around saying it would consider preemptive strikes against its enemies if threatened itself.

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