VIENNA — In selling the Iran nuclear deal to Congress and other skeptics, President Barack Obama said it is built on “unprecedented verification,” telling his radio audience during the weekend: “If Iran cheats, the world will know it.”
Only time will tell if Obama is right. While Iran could try to push back or cover up, it certainly has little incentive for deceit.
Its negotiators returned home to jubilant crowds hailing the prospect of an end to the crippling economic sanctions that forced Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. On Tuesday, even the chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard joined in praising their efforts.
Tehran thus is unlikely to risk the prospect of having the sanctions reimposed — the penalty for cheating. More likely, Iran will push for every loophole any agreement provides but will honor it and will wait out the strict restrictions any deal will impose.
Still, hoping that Iran will toe the line isn’t enough. That has left the United States and its negotiating partners seeking tight controls against potential Iranian deceit. The commitments Tehran has signed on to certainly go farther than ever before to ensure that if it does try to clandestinely circumvent restrictions on its nuclear program, it will not get away with it.
Iran can afford to bide its time — it resisted efforts to demolish its nuclear infrastructure, leaving it intact. That allows it to expand quickly to dimensions dwarfing its present capacities once constraints are lifted, starting 10 years after any accord takes hold.
Obama on Tuesday acknowledged as much, telling NPR News that Iran could have the capacities to build a nuclear bomb within roughly 13 years of the emerging nuclear deal.
Iranian atomic activities that the U.S. and its five negotiating partners are now trying to restrict were born of secrecy. Iran repeatedly has played for time since they were revealed, blocking probes while drawing out negotiations meant to curb the programs — and using the weeks, months or years won to expand nuclear activities instead.
Iran left the negotiating table with a commitment to implement the Additional Protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most potent monitoring instrument. In effect in nearly 150 countries, that agreement is meant to allow IAEA experts nearly unfettered access — normally within a day or two — to any site within those nations that the agency suspects may be used for secret nuclear work.
Iran’s willingness to hew to terms imposed by the Additional Protocol is by no means a given. Iran may push back on any dispute. And that could give it potential coverup time.
A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran apparently halted nuclear weapons work in 2003 has since been contradicted by the IAEA, as well as U.S. allies including Britain and Germany. All say Tehran may have continued such activities past that date.
