We know that the site in question was near Abadeh, because Netanyahu showed satellite photos of the Abadeh site in June 2019 and again in late July of this year, when a set of buildings had been removed by the latter date. Netanyahu bragged that he was revealing "yet another secret nuclear site...exposed in the archives."
However, IAEA wording suggested its letter was prompted not by any concrete evidence of nuclear activity at the Abadeh site, but by some evidence of the destruction of those buildings.
The IAEA thus chose the three sites based on nothing more than the fact that buildings were razed, and thanks to pressure applied by the Israelis and the United States. The notion that Iran "may have" used and stored undeclared nuclear material at undeclared site, moreover, was based solely on unvetted Israeli documents, contrary to the IAEA claim of "extensive and rigorous corroboration process."
In provoking a needless crisis over obscure hypotheticals, the IAEA has once again lent itself to the political interests of Washington and Tel Aviv -- just as it did during the Bush and Obama administrations. But this time the IAEA's highly politicized campaign is serving the Israeli aim of making it politically impossible for the next administration to return to the Iran nuclear deal.
On June 8, Iran's permanent mission the IAEA demanded that any request for clarification under the additional protocol should be based on "authenticated information" and expressed "concern" over attempts to "reopen outstanding issues" that had been closed in 2015.
Iran views the new IAEA exercise as yet another salient of the US-Israeli "maximum pressure" strategy. Tehran has thus insisted that the IAEA cease its role as a de facto prosecutor for the US-Israeli special relationship.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
