US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said today that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had confirmed Washington’s allegation that Iran had once been working on a nuclear bomb, but he added that Iran had cooperated adequately with IAEA investigators.
“The IAEA report is consistent with what the United States has long assessed with high confidence,” Toner told reporters.
“We made this public first in our 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, and that is that Iran had a nuclear weapons program that was halted in 2003.”
But, Toner said, now that the IAEA had been able to study the program and had found no evidence that it had continued beyond 2009, the United States was ready to move ahead.
“The IAEA has confirmed that Iran met its commitments to provide responses to IAEA requests under the roadmap for clarification of past and present issues,” he said.
Washington and the other members of the P5+1 contact group — Britain, China, France and Russia, plus Germany — will submit a motion to the IAEA board on December 15 to close the issue of what has been called the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s program.
“And then, after that, we can focus on implementing the JCPOA,” Toner said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed between Iran and the P5+1 contact group.