The International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation into Iran’s nuclear history failed to address fundamental questions about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, arms control experts at the Institute for Science and International Security argued in a report issued Wednesday.
• Despite obfuscation and stonewalling by Iran, the IAEA confirmed that Iran had a coordinated nuclear weapons development program until the end of 2003 and conducted some weapons development activities after 2003.
• Overall, Iran provided little real cooperation. Denials and lack of truthfulness should not be confused with cooperation in the context of the JCPOA, any more than such “cooperation” by a defendant in a criminal investigation would be construed as real cooperation.
• Faced with such outright Iranian efforts to deceive the inspectors, the IAEA broke relatively little new ground.
• The truth of Iran’s work on nuclear weapons is probably far more extensive than outlined by the IAEA in this report.
• The IAEA drew conclusions where it was able to. The bottom line is that the IAEA’s investigation into the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programs cannot be understood to be concluded, certainly it cannot be closed.
The institute’s findings put it at odds with the Obama administration, which did not demand a full accounting of Iran’s past illicit nuclear research as part of the nuclear deal reached this past summer.
The administration has argued that there is no need to get a full accounting because, as Secretary of State John Kerry asserted in June, “we have absolute knowledge” of Iran’s past military nuclear research. Kerry’s assertion was somewhat undermined by the revelation in the IAEA report that Iran continued its research into nuclear weapons until 2009. It was previously thought that Iran stopped weaponization research in 2003.
The institute’s reaction prompted attacks from the arms control community on Twitter. The institute responded by calling many of the members of the arms control community “PR flacks for the administration.” When Joe Cirincione, head of the Ploughshares Fund,which finances many of the arms control groups, objected to the criticism, the institute pointed out that he had accused Senator Benjamin Cardin (D – Md.) of being “pro-war” for opposing the deal. (Cardin wrote in expressing his opposition to the deal that “after numerous hearings and briefings, I am still not confident that we will fully resolve outstanding concerns on this topic [Iran’s nuclear history].” The IAEA report confirmed his concern.)
Transparency in the history of Iran’s nuclear and nuclear-weapons research “is seen as not just another issue – say, one that Iran could refuse to trade away by making concessions in other areas – but as a prerequisite to verifying Iranian compliance across all issues,” Omri Ceren wrote in The Tower last year.
Because “extensive evidence” existed to suggest that Iran had an illicit nuclear weapons program, Armin Rosen of Business Insider wrote on Tuesday, the IAEA needed to be able “to identify key personnel, facilities, supply chains, and past activities to establish exactly how far along Iran’s weaponization activities really are and to recognize whether those activities have been restarted.”
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