US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said on Tuesday that the State Department doesn’t mind that it is barred from seeing the classified side deals made between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which can only be seen by those two parties.
Toner was asked by a reporter: “are you confident that you have been briefed on all the most crucial details and that is what you’re telling the American people that you don’t need to see the document because you know everything that is in there?”
“Yeah, we are confident,” Toner replied. “This is not unique to Iran. The IAEA has these types of deals with countries all around the world.”
When asked if these side deals should be a concern given the unique situation of Iran’s repeated calls to destroy Israel and the US, Toner reiterated, “it is very common for these type of agreements to exist. There is nothing secretive about them.”
In a telling self-correction, he added, “we are confident that these are good ag-…that these agreements are fine.”
When asked in a Senate hearing last month about the side deals having Iran test its own nuclear sites, most significantly the covert army base Parchin, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he “trusts” the IAEA when it says it is satisfied with the deals.
Ironically, the IAEA has in numerous reports warned that Iran is conducting nuclear weapons testing at Parchin, and requested numerous times to inspect the site – requests that Iran rejected.
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