No one who's paid attention to this from the beginning can be surprised. We told you two years ago that the verification measures in the Iran nuclear deal were a joke, and that it would be easy for Iran to defy inspectors on virtually any pretext, no matter how flimsy. Not only that, but Obama and Kerry fought to structure the deal in that way because Iran wouldn't sign if they didn't. That's how badly they wanted signatures on a piece of paper, even if the deal they were signing was a complete disaster.
Now we're seeing that's exactly what it is:
Iran has dismissed a U.S. demand for U.N. nuclear inspectors to visit its military bases as “merely a dream” as Washington reviews a 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and six world powers, including the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called the nuclear pact - negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama - “the worst deal ever”. In April, he ordered a review of whether a suspension of nuclear sanctions on Iran was in the U.S. interest.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, last week pressed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to seek access to Iranian military bases to ensure that they were not concealing activities banned by the nuclear deal.
“Iran’s military sites are off limits ... All information about these sites are classified,” Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht told a weekly news conference broadcast on state television. “Iran will never allow such visits. Don’t pay attention to such remarks that are only a dream.”
Under U.S. law, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal. The next deadline is October, and Trump has said he thinks by then the United States will declare Iran to be non-compliant.
Under terms of the deal, the international nuclear watchdog can demand inspections of Iranian installations if it has concerns about nuclear materials or activities.
This makes me wonder if the Trump Administration has been delaying its declaration that Iran is in noncompliance precisely in anticipation of an event like this.
Obama and Kerry granted just about every demand the Iranians made for ways to avoid inspections, while claiming in discussions with Congress and the media that the inspection regime would be rigorous. This was a total lie and they knew it. But they also knew that the media would give them credit for the "historic" nature of the deal while glossing over or completely ignoring the holes that would neuter any usefulness in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
It's always been clear that the deal was a joke, but if Trump has pulled out earlier in the year he would have been accused of doing so strictly for partisan reasons. There are also practical issues with pulling out, not because the deal is any good but because it dismantled the multinational sanctions against Iran and there's probably no way to get all those countries to reimpose them. The U.S. could impose its own, which would have some effect, but not as much as if our negotiating partners were also on board. And they probably will not be.
That said, the deal is still a terrible one for the United States, and it was never ratified by the Senate so it doens't have the legal force of a treaty. Some will argue it does because of the horrible capitulation by which Mitch McConnell agreed to "not oppose it", but that doesn't pass constitutional muster to make it a treaty. It remains nothing more than an executive agreement signed by Barack Obama, and any subsequent president can end it.
Clearly, that's the best thing for President Trump to do, and it's much harder for the defenders of the deal to attack him for it when the Iranians have just clearly shown they have no intention of submitting to serious inspections.
Then again, Obama and Kerry never had any intention of making them. They just didn't count on being succeeded by a president who would call them out for the stunning giveaway they engineered to a hostile, terror-sponsoring nation.
Surprise.
