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The Iran Deal's Fatal Flaw
(Politico) Charles Duelfer - Any acceptable final Iran deal will depend on a strong weapons inspection element. Yet weapons inspectors can be no tougher than the body that empowers them - in this instance the UN Security Council. And herein lies the agreement's fundamental weakness - and perhaps its fatal flaw. Do we really want to depend on Vladimir Putin? The authorities that the Security Council mandated for UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors to verify Iraq's disarmament were extraordinary and probably well beyond anything Iran will accept. Yet UNSCOM and the IAEA after more than seven years of operations inside Iraq could not verify that Saddam had completely disarmed. The writer served as special advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and led the Iraq Survey Group, which conducted the investigation of the scope of Iraq's WMD.