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On the Precipice of a Very Bad Iran Deal

(The Dispatch) Danielle Pletka - it seems the U.S. is on the verge of reentering the Iran nuclear deal. The Islamic Republic has continued energetic work on its supposedly non-existent nuclear weapons program, making such progress that a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claims Tehran is already able to fashion a weapon. (That raises the question of why talks are continuing.) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) identified in 2019 a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities in Iran that had not been declared to the Agency and requested responses to these questions from Iran. After committing to answer IAEA questions, Iranian officials missed the agreed-upon deadline for responding. Reportedly, the current proposal to resolve the IAEA inspections dilemma is to condition implementation of the deal on the IAEA closing its investigation. For those countries concerned about Iran's malign intentions, a "return" to "compliance" with the JCPOA will be nearly moot, as the agreement's restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities will begin to expire in a year and a half, and almost all will lapse by the end of this decade. At that point Iran will be fully within its rights under the agreement to do all the things that the Biden administration tells us today it is too risky to permit Iran to do. Iran's nuclear program is largely on track; its missile and terrorism programs are untouched. The White House will likely ignore the angry denunciations of the new deal by the Israelis with conciliatory pats, new arms exports, and empty promises. The writer is a senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
2022-08-29 00:00:00
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