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Preventing Iran's Nuclear Checkmate

(National Interest) Avner Golov - Iran's stated opposition to comprehensive inspections on military sites reflects a sophisticated strategy aimed to undermine the most important basis for the American policy in the post-nuclear agreement world. The Supreme Leader has been very vocal in rejecting inspections on Iran's military sites as part of a final agreement. Iran's first goal was to secure Iran's right to enrich uranium despite five UN Security Council Resolutions that reject it, and achieved this goal in the interim agreement on November 2013. Iran's second objective was to avoid shutting down its enrichment sites and reactors, keeping its capability to rehabilitate its nuclear program in a relatively short time, which it achieved in the Lausanne declaration. The last move in the Iranian strategy is to take the edge off the inspection regime. Intrusive inspections are fundamental to deter Iran from violating the agreement, detect an Iranian violation, and provide the international community sufficient time to respond. The Iranian Supreme Leader understands that, which is why he is now pushing America to make concessions over the final details of the inspections. Thus, the battle over the international inspections is the battle over the entire negotiations. After the Lausanne declaration, President Obama noted that a nuclear deal with Iran "is not based on trust. It's based on unprecedented verification." U.S. negotiators should therefore ensure that any final agreement with Iran contains an unprecedented monitoring system that is able to verify Iran's compliance with the agreement and detects any violations. This authority should extend to Iran's military sites where Iran's most suspicious activities in the past have taken place. The writer is a researcher at the Center for a New American Security and a research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.
2015-06-15 00:00:00
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