The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nation's nuclear energy arm, asserted that it is “fully confident that the process and the result so far” of Iran's probe into their Parchin military complex has been “fully in line with safeguards practices” -- contradicting conservative media's fearmongering about this aspect of the recently signed nuclear agreement.

On August 19 the Associated Press published a flawed article claiming that an agreement between the IAEA and Iran allowed the country to use its own inspectors to take samples at the Parchin military base and that IAEA inspectors would be “barred from physically visiting the site.” Conservative media ran with the story, claiming that the deal with the IAEA would prevent international inspectors from accessing all nuclear sites, despite the fact that it only refers to past activity at one site and still requires confirmation that Iran is meeting the promises it made in the nuclear agreement.

A second article from the Associated Press, on September 21, further undermined conservative media's attempts to stoke fears about the agreement, quoting  IAEA officials who said that Iran's sampling procedures at Parchin meet “strict agency criteria that ensure 'the integrity of the sampling process and the authenticity of the samples.'” IAEA Deputy Director General Tero Varjoranta also noted that there “have been over 40 instances of letting a country being inspected use their own nationals to do their own sampling” and that the agency “feel[s] fully confident that the process and the result so far are fully in line with our safeguards practices”:

Deputy IAEA Director General Tero Varjoranta said that there have been over 40 instances of letting a country being inspected use their own nationals to do their own sampling and that the process is only a small part of a rigid regimen established by the agency to make sure there is no cheating.

He said the criteria at Parchin included: invasive monitoring by video and still cameras while the sampling took place; GPS tracking of the sampling process; IAEA agreement on where the samples were to be taken; review by unspecified peers of the inspection process; risk assessment and strict observance to make sure that procedures were followed step by step.

“We feel fully confident that the process and the result so far are fully in line with our safeguards practices,” he said, standing next to Amano at a Vienna news conference.

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The Iran arrangement was first revealed in a confidential draft agreement between the sides seen last month by The Associated Press. The draft said that Iranian experts, monitored by video and still cameras, would gather environmental samples at the site and hand them over to the agency for analysis.

Iran's atomic energy agency spokesman, Behrouz Kalmandi, said IAEA experts were not physically present during the sampling. But Amano said the procedure meets strict agency criteria that ensure “the integrity of the sampling process and the authenticity of the samples.”