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The U.S. Response to Iran's Cheating Is a Worrying Omen
(Washington Post) Editorial - A recent controversy over Iran's compliance with the interim accord now governing its nuclear work is troubling. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, but required that amounts over a specified ceiling be converted into an oxide powder that cannot easily be further enriched. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran met the requirement for the total size of its stockpile on June 30, but it did so by converting some of its enriched uranium into a different oxide form. Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, pointed out the problem, the administration's response was to rush to Iran's defense - and heatedly attack the institute. This points to "a U.S. willingness to legally reinterpret the deal when Iran cannot do what it said it would do, in order to justify that non-performance," institute President David Albright and his colleague Andrea Stricker wrote. In other words, overlooking Iranian cheating is easier than confronting it. Albright is a physicist with a long record of providing non-partisan expert analysis of nuclear proliferation issues.