UN nuclear watchdog inspects second Iran site

The United Nations nuclear watchdog inspected the second of two suspected former secret atomic sites in Iran as agreed with Tehran last month in a deal that ended a standoff over access, the agency said on Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not named either of the two undeclared sites, but it has described activities it suspects took place there in 2003, the year it and US intelligence services believe Iran halted a secret and coordinated nuclear weapons programme. Although the IAEA said it has the power to carry out snap inspections anywhere in Iran it deems necessary, Tehran denied it access to the two sites for seven months until the deal was struck. “As part of an agreement with Iran to resolve safeguards implementation issues specified by the IAEA, the agency this week conducted a complementary access at the second location in the country and took environmental samples,” it said in a statement. Those samples and others taken at the first site will be sent to labs and analysed for traces of nuclear material since the agency’s main task is to account for all nuclear material in a country to ensure it is not being used to make weapons. Iran denies ever having had a nuclear weapons programme. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">