Satellite photographs show the appearance of earth-moving vehicles and haulage lorries at Parchin, a military base where the IAEA said in its last report that Iranian scientists had experimented with a device that could only be used in the detonation system of a nuclear bomb.
When IAEA inspectors visited Iran last month, they were refused permission to visit Parchin. Since then, Tehran has partially backed down and conceded that the agency's experts can enter the location "once".
The satellite photographs appear to show a recent effort to sanitise the site beforehand, one IAEA official told the Associated Press news agency.
Last November, the IAEA said that experiments with the detonation system of nuclear weapons had been conducted inside a large metal container at Parchin.
Tehran adamantly denied this claim, which was carried under the heading "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear programme.
The IAEA explained the allegation was based on documents supplied by member states that purported to show that Iranian experts had studied the stages of how to build a nuclear weapon in the period before 2003.
The information suggested that "Iran constructed a large explosives containment vessel [at Parchin] in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments," said the report, adding that the IAEA had then independently obtained "commercial satellite images that are consistent with this information".
One particular method of detonating a nuclear device is by using a "neutron initiator".
Iran is believed to have carried out experiments with this technique, possibly at Parchin. If so, they might have left a radioactive residue in the soil. Part of the purpose of the proposed visit by IAEA inspectors will be to discover whether any such evidence is present.
If the experiments were carried out at Parchin, the experts would also try to establish when exactly they happened. American intelligence agencies delivered a combined judgment in 2007 stating that Iran had stopped all work of this kind in 2003.
However, other countries disagree and assess that Iran has subsequently pressed on with the experiments.
Any deliberate sanitisation of the site using the equipment shown in the satellite photographs could make it impossible to discover the truth.
Iran has resorted to this option before. Five years ago, the Lavizan Shian base was completely dismantled before the IAEA visited. This had been a suspected store for equipment needed in a military nuclear programme.
As international grows on Iran over its nuclear ambitions, an Israeli official claimed yesterday that President Barack Obama has promised to drop his opposition to military action against Iran if the Islamist regime does not abandon its programme within a year.
Mr Obama bowed to pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu during talks in Washington on Monday by agreeing to place a finite timetable on diplomatic efforts to end the nuclear impasse, an official in the Israeli prime minister's delegation was quoted as saying.
Such a concession would represent a significant shift in US policy at a time of growing concern in Washington that Israel is preparing to launch unilateral air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities within months.
"At first there was a gap between the Israeli assessment that an attack is necessary and the American belief that we could wait a year," the Israeli newspaper Maariv quoted the official as saying. "After the meeting, it can be said that though the two leaders did not reach an exact understanding, this gap has started to close.
"The American administration realised that it won't be possible to employ diplomacy for a full year."
No official has spoken in public about the contents of the two leaders' three-hour meeting. Although Mr Obama has notably toughened his rhetoric against Iran, he has continued to insist that new European Union and US sanctions against Tehran's central bank and energy sector be given a chance to work.
Members of his administration have also told Israel that it would be unwise to take action against Iran by itself. Gen Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Israeli strikes would only set back Iran's "nuclear programme" by a couple of years.
John Chipman, the head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, said yesterday that he concurred with Gen Dempsey's assessment, adding that the assurances Mr Obama had given in recent days meant that Israeli military action was now unlikely this year.
Mr Netanyahu, however, made no commitment to his host except to say that he had not yet decided whether to order air strikes.
The prime minister's national security adviser, the only other Israeli official to attend the meeting with Mr Obama, has suggested that this moment of reckoning is now close at hand. "Now we will have to sit down with ourselves, digest what was said by the Americans and decide," Yaakov Amidror told reporters.
Mr Netanyahu's intelligence chiefs have reportedly concluded that Israel has a window of just six to nine months before unilateral military action against Iran ceases to be effective, an analysis some observers say is deliberately overstated.
Israel has given a lukewarm welcome to a decision by Iran's six negotiating partners – Britain, the US, France, Germany, China and Russia – to accept an offer from Tehran to resume talks. The Israeli government is concerned that Iran's gesture is a ruse to give it diplomatic cover to press ahead with its nuclear programme while making the case for military action harder because negotiations are under way.
The Telegraph
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