Iran’s loss of its nuclear weapons research is a humiliating blow. It exposes the weakness of the Iran nuclear deal, the recklessness of Iran’s leaders, and the incompetence of the regime’s security organs. It demonstrates that the Islamic republic was already undermining the nuclear agreement.
The main flaw in the negotiations for the Joint Comprehensive PIan of Action, the 2015 nuclear agreement, was to let Iran conceal its weaponization efforts. The Obama administration focused on constraining Iran’s uranium enrichment and dismantling its heavy water reactor. The U.S., along with its partners in the P5+1, decided to downplay the threat from Iran’s weaponization activities and its ballistic missiles. Iran was allowed to maintain its denial that it had sought nuclear weapons. The assumption was that the JCPOA’s inspection mechanisms and the threat of renewed economic sanctions would prevent or detect Iranian violations. At worst, if Iran did cheat successfully, the lack of weapons grade uranium or plutonium would prevent the construction of a bomb. Iranian intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, was a price President Barack Obama was willing to pay to keep a nuclear weapon out of the Islamic republic’s hands.
The existence of the Iranian nuclear archive indicates that the Iranian regime liked Obama’s approach. Iranian leaders were willing to compromise on uranium enrichment and close their heavy water reactor because they judged that they could rebuild these capabilities in the future. The JCPOA permitted Iran to keep so much of its program, its weaponization research, and its ballistic missiles that the risk was worth the reward.
The Iranian government had three choices for the weaponization evidence it had concealed: surrender, destroy, or retain. The Iranian regime could have abided by its international obligations and handed these documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That would have meant accepting that Iran could never build a nuclear weapon. Still, it would have led to the end of Iran’s international isolation and years of sanctions. It is telling that the regime did not take the honest option.
Iran could have destroyed its weaponization research, which would have been the wisest choice from the regime’s perspective. Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, could have maintained his longstanding position that the nuclear controversy was “an unnecessary crisis.” The main disadvantage would have been to make restarting nuclear weapons development a slower, more difficult process.
Instead, the regime was so confident that the Iran deal did not end its nuclear weapons ambitions that it actually created a functioning nuclear archive. It went to the trouble of collecting and collating all of the relevant material in a central repository. This was not a historical exercise. According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, the regime asked its nuclear workers to “write down everything you have learned, and then write down what you didn’t learn and what we need to work on in the future, in a sense, to fill the gaps in.”
The sole purpose of such an archive is to enable future nuclear weapons development, a violation of the Iran nuclear deal and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Unless the Iranians made copies, the Israeli capture of the archive has removed that option. It turns out that Obama was wrong to argue in August 2015 that the only choices were the nuclear deal or war.
Worse, losing such a vital asset exposes the regime’s vulnerability. For years, the Islamic republic conveyed the impression that its regional dominance and possession of a nuclear weapon were only a matter of time. The nuclear deal, by letting Iran keep its weaponization research and ballistic missiles, affirmed that sense of inevitability. Obama and President Trump’s unwillingness to resist Iranian intervention in Iraq and Syria sent the same message. In recent years, Iranian security officials have traveled freely around the Middle East in a way they would never have dared before. Zarif felt confident enough in 2017 to declare that “Arab affairs are Iran’s business,” while clarifying this was not “malevolent.”
For many Middle East states, Iran’s embarrassment is therefore a welcome setback. The countries that Iran has targeted need no longer feel that they are always on the defensive against a stronger adversary. If the Iranian regime cannot safeguard its most important secrets, it cannot protect its personnel or other assets anywhere. This is particularly worrying for those Iranians who worked on the nuclear program. The archive must contain names of nuclear engineers and others who must now seek alternative accommodation, whether in Iran or elsewhere.
Within Iran, the exposure of the regime’s incompetence will embolden its opponents. Iranians understand that the Islamic republic is corrupt, cruel, and mendacious. They have been taught to fear the state’s security apparatus. Since December 2017, however, there has been a steady current of popular unrest. One of the complaints of the protesters is the regime’s ecological mismanagement. The revelation that the Islamic republic identified five potential nuclear test sites inside Iran will add to that tally of grievances. The sense that Iranians have nothing to lose from confronting an inept government is likely to spread.
Andrew Apostolou was the director for Iran at Freedom House.
