Throughout the debate over the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration insisted that its approach to brokering a deal with the mullahs is guided by a simple principle: “verification, not trust.” Of course, by the time a deal was struck the Obama administration had given away the store, so there was precious little left to verify. Recall that prior to the negotiations, the White House position was that Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program should be dismantled, centrifuges and all. Well, that didn’t happen. Then the administration promised Iran would have to submit to “anytime, anywhere” inspections of their nuclear facilities. Somehow that evolved into letting Iran “self-inspect.”
This was already humiliating, but now it appears that the Obama administration has no intention of verifying Iranian compliance with the few requirements Iran accepted. According to the terms of the agreement, Iran was to disclose all “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program. In July, no less than Secretary of State John Kerry said, “PMD has to be resolved—before [Iran] get[s] one ounce of sanctions relief.”
But on December 15, the United Nations’s nuclear regulatory body—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—with the encouragement of the Obama administration, voted to sweep the PMD issue under the rug. They did so in spite of overwhelming evidence Iran has not begun to come clean about its nuclear weapons program. Now, with PMD out of the way, the Obama administration can begin lifting sanctions on Iran as early as next month, giving Tehran billions of dollars with which it can export terror all over the world.
The rationale for excusing Iran is a recent IAEA report concluding that Iran pursued a nuclear weapons program through 2009 but hasn’t aggressively done so since. Even that minor acknowledgment, however, contradicts Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said in August, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought nuclear weapons nor will it ever seek them in the future.”
There’s also ample reason to believe the IAEA’s conclusions about the status of Iran’s weapons program are incomplete. Representative Mike Pompeo, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently fired off a blistering letter to Henry S. Ensher, the American ambassador to the IAEA, warning the agency was about to make “a grave and historic error.”
In the letter, Rep. Pompeo notes that the IAEA’s 2011 report identified 12 specific activities Iran had pursued in connection with its nuclear weapons program. In four of those key areas, the IAEA has obtained no new relevant information. This includes such vital areas as Iran’s missile program and its ability to equip its missiles with nuclear payloads. (Note that even as the IAEA voted to excuse its ignorance on this matter, the very next day, December 16, another U.N. panel concluded Iran had violated a U.N. Security Council resolution with a missile test it conducted in October.)
As for requiring outside inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities to verify whether the regime is telling the truth, Pompeo slapped the IAEA for being simultaneously feckless and disingenuous:
Pompeo’s warnings went ignored, and there will be damaging repercussions. Iran now knows it can get away with lying about adhering to the most basic conditions of an already lopsided deal, so the U.N. and the IAEA can’t expect to be heeded in the future. Other countries with nuclear ambitions are now empowered to flout the IAEA. And the blown opportunity to determine the extent of Iran’s existing weapons program will make it harder to ascertain and impede Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the future.
History will judge the Obama administration harshly for striking such a dangerous deal with Iran. But now the Obama administration has also imbued the phrase “verification, not trust” with depressing irony. Paradoxically, the Iranians have proven trustworthy in that they can be counted on to lie. It’s the dishonesty and cowardice required to refuse enforcing even the meager terms of the Iran deal that are appalling.
