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Iran Violates Nuclear Deal's Enrichment Limitations frontpagemag.com/fpm/274247/ira…
Iran has been playing a shell game with its nuclear weapons program for years. Before Hassan Rouhani became Iran’s president, he had served as its chief nuclear negotiator with several European countries.
He boasted in 2004 how Iran had managed to lull the Europeans with whom he was negotiating into a sense of calm while Iran significantly increased its centrifuge production capacity.
“When we wanted to negotiate with the Europeans last year, we had something like 150 centrifuges,” Rouhani said back then, “but today we have about 500 centrifuges that are ready and operational. We could increase that number to 1,000.”
Now, having mastered centrifuge production and the uranium enrichment process, there is little doubt, based on its past history, that Iran has been playing its shell game once again.
While lulling the international community with the JCPOA, Iran is able to move forward with its development and testing of a nuclear explosive device and of technology enabling the integration of a nuclear warhead into a missile delivery vehicle capable of safe re-entry.
We know from the final assessment report released by the IAEA in 2015, that Iran had in the past worked on the development of a nuclear explosive device, including modeling and calculations related to nuclear explosive configurations.
Iran refused to divulge any information regarding its modeling activities, claiming that it was none of the IAEA’s business.
The IAEA had to rely on information provided by Iran, which is like relying on an arsonist for an honest account of how the fire he set began.
The IAEA's inspection of a location within the Parchin military complex, where high explosive testing related to the development of nuclear weapons had reportedly taken place, was considered crucial.
Yet IAEA inspectors were limited to one building. Samplings for testing were conducted by Iranian technicians. The site itself appears to have been compromised by actions that Iran had previously taken to cover its tracks.
The IAEA Director General and Deputy Director General for Safeguards observed during their visit to the site “recent signs of internal refurbishment, a floor with an unusual cross-section and a ventilation system which appeared incomplete,” according to the IAEA’s final report.
Despite significant reasons to be concerned that Iran had not come clean about the nuclear-related work it had done, in 2015 the IAEA decided to close its investigation into Iran's past weaponization activities, allowing the JCPOA’s up-front sanctions relief to be implemented.
Iran has indicated that its military sites are off limits to IAEA inspectors. IAEA Director General has admitted that when it comes to the IAEA’s capacity to check whether Iran was still conducting work on prohibited nuclear explosive device tech, his agency’s “tools are limited”
Iran’s latest shell game has seemed to be working. Up until just recently the IAEA has given Iran a clean bill of health with regard to meeting its uranium enrichment commitments.
High level Obama administration officials continue to claim that Iran’s leaders have acted like eagle scouts, only to be provoked by the Trump administration’s unilateral actions.
“Iran was complying with the deal until the US pulled out and started violating its terms,” tweeted Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications.
All the while, the Iranian regime has made sure that the IAEA inspectors are blocked from freely visiting Iran’s military sites for unannounced inspections to verify that Iran was not working on developing nuclear explosive device technology.
By blocking such inspections, Iran has been in violation of the JCPOA from the outset. Its steps to breach the JCPOA’s nuclear enrichment limitations brings out into the open its treachery, which deserves even harsher penalties than the Trump administration has imposed so far.
