The news that a solution has been found to offer United Nations inspectors access to Iranian nuclear sites makes it appear as if the Obama administration will gets the deal it has been working toward. The Times of Israel is reporting that “a senior U.S. official” is saying that the two sides in the nuclear talks have reached an agreement that, in theory, ought to grant the International Atomic Energy Agency the ability to inspect Iran’s facilities to ensure they aren’t cheating on an agreement that is supposed to prevent from working toward a bomb over the next ten years. If true, that would mean a major obstacle to completion of the negotiations is completed allowing the White House to be able to trumpet the pact as a triumph for American diplomacy and enhance its chances of surviving a Congressional vote on ratification. But the language used by the senior official to describe this achievement ought to give pause to those seeking to declare the deal a success before it is even signed. If, as the source said, a “process” will be required to allow the IAEA to show up at a nuclear or military site, then it’s not clear that what will follow could possibly be the sort of surprise inspection that would actually catch any cheating. Moreover, since it we’re also told it won’t mean that inspectors will have access to all Iranian military sites, the diplomatic victory we may be hearing about in the coming days may not be anything like the unfettered inspections without warning that would be needed for the deal to work.
The administration has already begun selling this “compromise” by saying that it’s completely reasonable for Iran to deny access to all of its military sites because the U.S. wouldn’t allow such inspections either. That may be true but, again, as with every other retreat by American negotiators, what the administration has done here is to put the Islamist regime and its nuclear ambitions on the same moral plane as the United States. The U.S. is treating Iran with kid gloves because it sees the rogue regime as a potential partner in a new détente rather than as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with dreams of regional hegemony.
The series of events that led to this compromise show that, as has been the case throughout the negotiations, the Iranians are in control. Once Iran’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out any inspections at all, that was the signal for the U.S to begin retreating from a position that would grant IAEA officials complete access to Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. By restricting inspections only to known sites and giving up the right to enter other military areas, the West has more or less given Tehran the okay to move any illicit nuclear work to those that will be off limits to the inspectors. As I noted last month, Khamenei has been giving Obama a lesson in tough negotiating tactics.
As for the process that the senior official claims will be sufficient to grant the IAEA access to those areas not already within their purview, any such procedure will probably grant the Iranians plenty of warning time to clean up their act. Without the right to show up announced at such places, any inspection process is, by definition, almost worthless. Thus, when looked at more closely, this compromise may not provide the sort of inspections that the U.S. has long promised would have to be essential to any deal. By seeking to preserve the Iranians dignity and to mollify Khamenei, what the administration has done is to actually give away the game as they have on every other nuclear issue including uranium enrichment, the underground bunker at Fordow, their continued possession of thousands of centrifuges and the fact that the deal will expire in ten years leaving the Islamist regime free to do as it likes after that. The Iran inspection process may sound good but it may turn out to be more of a scam than insurance against cheating.
Congress should not be deceived by any deal that stops short of surprise and unfettered access to all of Iran’s sites. Despite Secretary of State Kerry’s boasts, it is well known that Western intelligence has no idea what is going on at nuclear sites that have not already been acknowledged by the regime. If reports about this compromise are accurate, we’ll never know more about them or what is really going on at Iran’s military sites. That’s a formula for an Iranian bomb, not a reason for Congress to okay a weak deal that is getting weaker with each passing day.
