The State Department stonewalled questions Thursday about whether Iran was granted secret exemptions from certain terms of the nuclear deal, following details of a new think tank report saying exemptions were quietly granted.
State Department spokesman John Kirby maintained that “there has been no cutting of slack” for Iran. He acknowledged that a joint commission created under the deal had provided “guidance” to Iran on how to implement the agreement, but he refused to describe the guidance.
“I’m not going to talk about the specific work of the joint commission,” Kirby said. “I’m not going to do that — I can’t do that — because by the agreement itself, it’s confidential.”
The nature of the guidance is significant because of news that the western powers loosened restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program that are imposed by the letter of the agreement, known as Joint Commission Plan of Action.
“We have learned that some nuclear stocks and facilities were not in accordance with JCPOA limits on Implementation Day, but in anticipation the Joint Commission had earlier and secretly exempted them from the JCPOA limits,” the Institute for Science and International Security reported. “One senior knowledgeable official stated that if the Joint Commission had not acted to create these exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the JCPOA by Implementation Day.”
Such exemptions are at odds with President Obama’s claims in the run-up to the ratification and implementation of the deal.
“Iran has powerful incentives to keep its commitments,” Obama said in August of 2015, while Congress was preparing to vote on the deal. “Before getting sanctions relief, Iran has to take significant, concrete steps like removing centrifuges and getting rid of its stockpile.”
Kirby repeatedly claimed that “there has been no loosening of Iran’s commitments,” but he just as frequently declined to say whether the guidance provided any of the relief described in the think tank report.
