by Our Foreign Desk

IRAN has agreed to allow inspections of military sites as part of a diplomatic deal covering its nuclear energy programme, it was announced yesterday.

News of the breakthrough came shortly after US deal-makers blocked the final declaration of a UN non-proliferation conference which would have called for a nuclear weapon-free Middle East.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a negotiator at the seven-party talks in Vienna, revealed the agreement’s terms yesterday after a special closed session of parliament.

But Mr Araghchi said interrogation of Iranian physicists working on the programme was out of the question.

“Americans are after interviewing our nuclear scientists. We didn’t accept it,” he said.

MP Ahmad Shoohani, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee who attended the closed-door session, said restricted inspections of military sites will be carried out under strict control and specific circumstances.

“Managed access will be in a shape where UN inspectors will have the possibility of taking environmental samples from the vicinity of military sites,” Mr Shoohani said.

Iran and the six other Vienna negotiation participants — Russia, China, Britain, US, France and Germany — hope to work out terms of a final nuclear deal before a June 30 deadline.

Inspections of military sites was a demand of the US, which accuses Iran of using its peaceful nuclear energy programme as a cover for developing nuclear weapons.

The announcement of the deal contradicted a speech by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to senior military officers last week, in which he declared that foreign inspectors would never gain access to Iranian military facilities or nuclear scientists.

The four-week, 162-nation UN non-proliferation conference ended on Friday with the US blocking the final declaration, which called for a Middle East nuclear disarmament conference by March of next year.

US representative Rose Gottemoeller claimed the proposal by Egypt and other Arab states was “unrealistic and unworkable” and “incompatible with our long-standing policies.”

Israeli Prime Minsister Benjamin Netanyahu personally thanked US Secretary of State John Kerry.