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.