Not really sure what to make about the Parchin story

Further to my previous post about the Parchin nuclear site …

This article from Vox argues that the AP’s article about the Parchin nuclear site has “distorted” a “mild and widely anticipated compromise on a single set of inspections to a single, long-dormant site” into “something that sounds much worse, but actually isn't.”

This is a “situation that arms control experts have long anticipated, and ... is not really as big of a deal as it initially sounded. It all comes down to a single, one-time set of inspections at a single, long-dormant facility.”

“In the early 2000s, Iran conducted specialized explosive tests at a building in Parchin, with the help of a former Soviet nuclear scientist. It is widely believed that these tests were related to developing a nuclear bomb. This work appears to have ceased more than a decade ago (the building is under satellite monitoring), and it seems highly likely that Iran has since scrubbed it.”

“Under the nuclear deal, the UN-run International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is supposed to investigate what experts call ‘possible military dimensions’ (PMD) of Iran's past nuclear work. The idea is just that the world should know what happened. That means looking into Parchin; it is meant to give the IAEA an opportunity to try to verify whether or not its suspicions are correct.”

“At Parchin, this was to be a one-time set of inspections. This issue is totally distinct from the 10 to 20 years of continuous inspections at active nuclear sites, which will be conducted by the IAEA and not by Iranians.”

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Middlebury College's Monterey Institute of International Studies, “emphasized that the stakes were low. Few people expect a Parchin inspection to find much of value.”

“‘Work stopped in 2002,’ Lewis explained, ‘so Iran has had 13 years to clean that site. … I don't expect the IAEA to find much … No one should be willing to blow up this deal over access to this site.’”