Disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal is Unravelling

It has been a year since President Trump pulled the United States out of the Obama administration's disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The other parties to the JCPOA - China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom – have remained in the deal. However, the Iranian regime is getting impatient with the Europeans for allegedly not fulfilling their supposed economic commitments, while the Trump administration has imposed escalating sanctions that are crippling Iran’s economy.

The Trump administration’s oil sanctions have been strengthened to the point that no more waivers to countries still purchasing oil from Iran will be granted. This means that countries that continue purchasing oil from Iran will face U.S. sanctions of their own. The Trump administration has also designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism while also controlling vast sectors of the Iranian economy, as a foreign terrorist organization. Any individual or company subject to U.S. jurisdiction doing business with any individuals or entities affiliated with any part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and/or the vast pieces of the Iranian economy it controls may find itself in serious legal jeopardy under U.S. law. The Iranian economy’s free-fall is accelerating with even more U.S. sanctions being imposed. As a result, the Iranian regime’s leaders are lashing out in all directions. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech on Wednesday that Iran no longer considered itself bound by its commitments regarding limits on the storage of enriched uranium and heavy water stocks. These are the building blocks for producing nuclear weapons. Moreover, he warned that Iran would resume high level uranium enrichment if the remaining parties to the JCPOA do not act to protect Iran’s banking and oil sectors within the next 60 days. "If the five countries came to the negotiating table and we reached an agreement, and if they could protect our interests in the oil and banking sectors, we will go back to square one (and will resume our commitments)," he said. President Rouhani also tweeted: “The EU/E3+2 will face Iran's further actions if they can not (sic) fulfill their obligations within the next 60 days and secure Iran's interests.”

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Secretary of State Pompeo called Iran’s announcement “intentionally ambiguous” at a news conference in London with British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Secretary Pompeo added that for now the U.S. would “have to wait and see what Iran’s actions actually are.” While Russia and China are backing Iran and blaming the United States, the Western European countries still in the JCPOA may re-impose their own sanctions against Iran if Iran does resume its high-level nuclear enrichment and other activities banned by the JCPOA. At his news conference with Secretary Pompeo, British Foreign Secretary Hunt warned Iran’s leaders of unspecified “consequences” if they break the nuclear deal. Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s former Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications who now is the co-chair of a group calling itself National Security Action, is very upset that the disastrous nuclear deal he so vigorously promoted is unravelling. Rhodes re-tweeted on his own twitter account the following tweet sent by his group: “The Trump administration has goaded Iran into escalation across realms: politically, economically, and, with Bolton’s recent saber-rattling, even militarily. We’re now in a confrontation that’s entirely needless because the Iran deal was working…” Rhodes is spinning now, just as he did when he was selling Obama’s nuclear deal to Congress and the American people with smoke and mirrors. The JCPOA worked only to serve Iran’s interests.

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Perhaps the most serious flaw in the deal is the lack of effective international inspection mechanisms to verify Iran's full compliance with the JCPOA. Rhodes overpromised on this issue back in April 2015 when he said that under the nuclear deal, which was then still being negotiated, “you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.” He added that “if we see a site that we need to inspect on a military facility, we can get access to that site and inspect it. So if it's a suspicious site that we believe is related to its nuclear efforts, we can get access and inspect that site through the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].” That turned out to be wishful thinking at best. The fact is that the Obama administration caved on the inspection issue in the face of Iran’s demands, including that its military sites were off limits to outside inspectors unless Iran agreed otherwise. After the nuclear deal was finalized in July 2015 without the access guarantees that Rhodes had promised, Rhodes shamelessly raised a red herring. “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere where you can basically go anywhere in the country, look at whatever you wanted to do, that had nothing to do with the nuclear program,” Rhodes said. Unfortunately, there is also no such access for monitoring and inspection of certain activities that have everything to do with Iran's nuclear program. The Iranians have made sure that the UN’s IAEA inspectors are not able to freely visit Iran’s military sites for unannounced inspections. Work on nuclear explosive trigger devices appears to have taken place at one or more of such off-limits military sites in the past. A section of the JCPOA bans “activities which could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” This includes the use of computer simulation models of a nuclear explosive device, and designing, developing, fabricating, acquiring, or using multi-point explosive detonation systems suitable for a nuclear explosive device, unless approved through a JCPOA mechanism for non-nuclear purposes and subject to monitoring.

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Although IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has stated that Iran’s nuclear-related commitments are being implemented, he noted his agency’s concentration on Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle related capabilities, ranging from the mining of uranium all the way through to the final disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste. However, the Iranian regime knows that it can quickly ramp up its nuclear fuel production when it chooses, as it has now threatened to do. What the Iranian regime is working on currently with respect to development of nuclear triggering device technology is cloaked in secrecy. IAEA Director Amano has admitted that, when it comes to the IAEA’s capacity to check whether Iran was still conducting work on nuclear explosive device technology, his agency’s “tools are limited.” He told Reuters in 2017 that the specific section of the JCPOA banning Iran’s activities that could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device did not expressly ensure full access by IAEA inspectors to verify compliance. The Obama administration also made a last-minute concession by agreeing to keep out of the text of the nuclear deal itself any prohibitions on Iranian testing of ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear weapons. The Obama administration’s explanation was that the missiles had become a separate issue, to be dealt with under a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing the nuclear deal that has turned out to be toothless. Iran has brazenly tested ballistic missiles since then, including missiles with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” emblazoned on the sides. There is an obvious linkage between Iran’s continued development and launching of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which flouts the same UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the JCPOA, and the miniaturization of the nuclear warheads themselves including their triggers so that they can fit on top of the ballistic missiles. Finally, Obama granted Iran relief upfront from the economic sanctions that had brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. Iran has used the freed-up monies, together with the cash ransom it received for releasing several American hostages, to finance its global terrorist network led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The United Nations continues to turn a blind eye to the JCPOA’s fundamental flaws and the unenforceability of the ballistic missile restrictions in the Security Council resolution that endorsed the JCPOA. “Our message on the JCPOA is that the Secretary‑General feels that the JCPOA is a very important diplomatic achievement,” said the spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres this week. To the contrary, the JCPOA was a notable diplomatic disaster that thankfully is finally unravelling.