The final Iran nuclear deal agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is heading this Monday to the United Nations Security Council for a scheduled rubber stamp endorsement of its terms. The resolution, which will go into effect 90 days after passage, incorporates the JCPOA as an attachment. It invokes the Security Council’s authority under the UN Charter to call upon the UN member states to support the implementation of the nuclear deal terms.
In addition to promising to veto any attempt by Congress to block the deal, the Obama administration intends to render Congress irrelevant by using the UN Security Council as an instrument for conferring on the JCPOA the status of binding international law. Six prior Security Council resolutions passed between 2006 and 2010 have required Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program altogether, four of which contain sanctions. They will be terminated and replaced with the loop-hole ridden JCPOA before Congress even begins to consider what the JCPOA contains.
Security Council Resolution 1929 (2010), for example, specifically stated that enforcement measures including sanctions would only be lifted if and when “Iran suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, as verified by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].” Security Council Resolution 1747 (2007) contained a similar edict as a condition for lifting an embargo on Iran’s import or export of conventional arms and ballistic missile related materials.
Iran never complied with this nuclear enrichment and reprocessing suspension edict.
In a report dated May 29, 2015, the IAEA concluded: “Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has not suspended all of its enrichment related activities…” The report added that Iran was still “conducting a number of activities” at certain sites “which are in contravention of its obligations to suspend all enrichment related activities and heavy water related projects, notwithstanding that the facilities are under Agency safeguards.”
Iran also stonewalled the IAEA’s investigation of military nuclear related activities that were said to have occurred at sites which Iran had not declared.
The May 29, 2015 report stated:
“The Agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran is required to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency.”
If Iran’s nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes as Iran has persistently claimed, why on earth would Iran ever need to conduct activities or procure anything that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems?
In the absence of Iran’s full cooperation and opening up of all suspected sites to unfettered IAEA inspections, the IAEA report stated that “the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
Under the sanctions regime established by Security Council resolutions going back nearly a decade, Iran would get no relief from sanctions or the embargoes unless the IAEA certifies that all nuclear material in Iran is being used in peaceful activities.
Despite the fact that Iran is far from complying with these long-established requirements, the resolutions containing them are being swept away. Past Security Council resolutions prohibiting nuclear enrichment and research & development outright are being replaced by a resolution which endorses Iran’s retention of its core nuclear enrichment infrastructure and sunsets major restrictions on further enrichment or research & development. The open-ended conventional arms and ballistic missile embargoes are being replaced by embargoes that will go away in 5 years and 8 years respectively, no matter what Iran does or does not do.
In other words, Iran is being rewarded for its misbehavior. Sanctions relief will begin in a matter of months, possibly triggered by an IAEA report due at the end of this year that would simply provide an “assessment of the clarification of the issues related to the possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. All that the IAEA, led by its Director General Yukiya, will be providing is a progress report on whether Iran is finally showing evidence of cooperating with the IAEA investigation, not a final conclusion with full answers to all its questions regarding Iran’s past suspected activities. As Tariq Rauf, a former senior IAEA official now at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said about this arrangement, as quoted in the Guardian: “The fix is already in. The Americans have said they don’t want a confession. Amano has said he will give an assessment report, not a conclusion, which is not what the IAEA normally does. His likely assessment by December is that there are unanswered questions, but the agency has what it needs, and it will be rubber-stamped by the board.”
There are many other things wrong with the final agreement being endorsed by the new Security Council resolution. After the main restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program go away in 12 years or so, Iran will be free to enrich enough uranium in advanced centrifuges to develop a nuclear bomb in virtually no time. With sanctions having been lifted years earlier, Iran will have enough money available to pay for advanced enrichment equipment and missile delivery systems it needs to become a full-fledged nuclear power, while increasing its funding of its terrorist proxies all around the world.
Moreover, while the JCPOA restrictions on enrichment, nuclear-related R&D and purchases remain in effect, the inspectors from the IAEA will not have “anytime, anywhere” access to suspected sites. Experts, including former members of President Obama’s own administration, have said that such access is necessary for effective verification of Iran’s compliance with the restrictions. The Obama administration instead agreed to a convoluted dispute resolution procedure which will give Iran at least 24 days to play a shell game with any covert activities it decides to undertake in contravention of the JCPOA. Iran’s long record of cheating virtually ensures that Iran will game the system set up for deciding whether inspectors will have access to all sites where undeclared suspected nuclear related activities may be going on.
A careful reading of the new Security Council resolution also lays bare two major loopholes in the deal that have not received much discussion so far. When President Obama talks about the “snap back” of sanctions if Iran violates its commitments, he means that any sanctions previously lifted would automatically go back into place. And indeed the JCPOA does provided a complex set of procedures involving the Security Council which boil down to the veto-proof restoral of sanctions if Iran is found violating its commitments. The problem is that any commercial agreements entered into after the lifting of the sanctions – contracts that would have been prohibited if the sanctions had not been lifted - will continue to remain in effect even after the sanctions “snap back.” This means that if sanctions are removed in Year 2, for example, Iran will then be able to enter into multiyear contracts for the purchase and sale of goods, services, commodities and technology that it had been barred from doing before. If in Year 3, Iran is found to have violated key commitments and the sanctions snap back into place, Iran can still bank on those multiyear contracts it had entered into before the snap back.
The second loophole receiving very little attention has to do with the lifting of the ballistic missile embargo after Year 8, whether or not the IAEA gives Iran a clean bill of health on the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities. Assume for the moment that Iran decides not to cheat beforehand and obtain missile parts and technology from North Korea, which would be virtually impossible to stop. Iran needs only to wait 8 years and then be free of any requirement for Security Council approval in order to procure any items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. Indeed, Iran will be free after 8 years, with the blessing of the Security Council, to engage in any activities related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches. If Iran’s nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes as Iran has persistently claimed, why on earth would Iran ever need to conduct activities or procure anything that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems?
The Obama administration negotiated a disastrous deal with the world’s leading state sponsor of global terrorism. The deal hands the Iranian regime the keys to a nuclear armed future, threatening the future of our children and grandchildren. The United Nations Security Council is being used to midwife the legal instrument that legitimizes the path to a possible nuclear holocaust.
