Iran has had a very bad week and it looks as though that will continue. That began, propitiously enough, with the International Atomic Energy Agency informing Iran that it was out of compliance with its Safety Agreement with the agency. Reuters reports:
VIENNA, June 11 (Reuters) – Below are key passages from a four-page resolution on Iran that diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed on Thursday. The text is still confidential and was seen by Reuters.
Here are some key passages:
(e) Regretting that despite the above resolutions by the Board and numerous opportunities provided by the Director General since 2019, Iran has failed to provide the co-operation required under its Safeguards Agreement, impeding Agency verification activities, sanitizing locations, and repeatedly failing to provide the Agency with technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at several undeclared locations in Iran or information on the current location(s) of nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment, instead stating, inconsistent with the Agency’s findings, that it has declared all nuclear material and activities required under its Safeguards Agreement,
(f) Noting the Director General’s conclusion … that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three undeclared locations in Iran, specifically, Lavisan-Shian, Varamin, and Turquzabad, and that, because of the lack of technically credible answers by Iran, the Agency is not in a position to determine whether the nuclear material at these undeclared locations in Iran has been consumed, mixed with other declared material, or is still outside of Safeguards,
and
(h) Noting with concern the Agency’s conclusion that Iran retained unknown nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment, and other assets, arising from the former undeclared structured nuclear programme, at Turquzabad in the period 2009 until 2018, after which items were removed from the location, the whereabouts of which remain unknown,
The emphasis is mine. What the IAEA has acknowledged is what I’ve been saying all along. We have never known the extent of Iran’s nuclear development program. That includes during the period in which the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was in force.
I don’t believe that apologists for the Obama Administration recognize what the IAEA has done to them. The JCPOA could not accomplish its objective because the Iranians have never been forthcoming. They merely revealed what we already knew. Their compliance with it was limited to that.
That is not to say that I think the Trump Administration acted rightly in abrogating the JCPOA. I think it acted foolishly. Limited as Iranian compliance was we had already materially borne the costs of the JCPOA and abrogating it just threw that investment away. What I think the Trump Administration should have done was work to limit expectations of what the JCPOA could accomplish.
Then only a day later the other shoe dropped. The Israelis attacked Iran’s known nuclear development facilities and made a special point of “decapitating” Iran’s nuclear development and military. The exchange of hostilities between Israel and Iran continues. Alexander Cornwell, Parisa Hafezi and Jeff Mason report at Reuters:
TEL AVIV/DUBAI/WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters)
Iranian missiles struck major Israeli cities on Monday while Israel’s prime minister said his country was on its way to eliminating “threats” from nuclear and missile facilities in Iran and civilian casualties mounted on both sides.
After four days of conflict between the regional foes, Iran said its parliament was preparing a bill to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) adding that Iran remained opposed to developing weapons of mass destruction.
By most accounts Israel has done substantial damage to Iran’s nuclear and missile development programs and has substantial control of the skies over Iran so expect Israel’s attacks on Iranian infrastructure to continue.
All of this is completely consistent with what I have maintained for the last twenty years: far from being a deterrent any nuclear development program on Iran’s part would be a target.
We don’t know what will materialize from the conflict. Perhaps Israel knows where all of Iran’s nuclear development facilities are located but I doubt it. Iran is unlikely to be deterred by its losses and possibly not even slowed down. I suspect that the likelihood of the U. S.’s being drawn into the conflict are high, something President Trump increases by hinting at American cooperation with Israel in Israel’s attacks on Iran.
I don’t believe that an Iranian attack on the U. S. will be a conventional one. I suspect that Iran will stick to its strengths which are in supporting terrorism. Such an attack could be in the Middle East, in Europe, or here in the United States.