The effectiveness of a nuclear deal with Iran could be undercut by “bureaucratic neglect—or a political desire to look the other way,” argued an editorial (Google link) in The Wall Street Journal published today. The piece was commenting on a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found that the State Department “had failed to provide timely reports to Congress on the proliferation activities of Iran, North Korea and Syria.”
GAO found that State had failed to establish a basic process to meet its obligations under the 2006 Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act. “Prolonged delays in eventually imposing INKSNA sanctions could erode the credibility of such threats and INKSNA’s utility as a tool in helping to curb weapons of mass destruction proliferation,” GAO concluded. State knew of 23 people involved in sanctions-busting activities in 2011 but only imposed sanctions last December.
That’s a long time to let bad guys run free, especially when nuclear technology is at stake. Keep in mind that President Obama has promised that any nuclear deal will provide a year’s warning should Iran cheat.
GAO describes a Byzantine bureaucratic process, involving four “State-led interagency working groups,” input from the intelligence community, further input from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Commerce and the National Security Council, a meeting of a “sub-Interagency Policy Committee,” further review by relevant committees and eventual sign-off from the Deputy Secretary of State. Amid that morass, the marvel is that anyone gets sanctioned.
President Barack Obama has stated that his administration’s goal in the nuclear negotiations with Iran is to ensure that Iran’s “breakout is at least a year … that — that if they decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.” For the one-year breakout time to be sufficient to respond, a mechanism needs to be in place to ensure that violations are detected and identified, and a process is in place to respond to them quickly.
Experts such as former International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director-general Olli Heinonen and former State Department official Dennis Ross have emphasized that any effective nuclear agreement must have mechanisms in place for the West to be able to detect and react to Iranian violations before Iran could develop a nuclear weapon.
[Photo: Nuclear Threat Initiative / YouTube ]