Indeed:
A secret Iranian archive seized by Israeli agents earlier this year indicates that Tehran’s nuclear program was more advanced than Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency had thought, according to a prominent nuclear expert who examined the documents.
That conclusion in turn suggests that if Iran pulls out of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal that U.S. President Donald Trump has already abandoned, it has the know-how to build a bomb fairly swiftly, perhaps in a matter of months, said David Albright, a physicist who runs the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C.
The IAEA didn't discover how close Iran was back then. Nor did we with all our intelligence assets.
I find it disturbing that even with this revelation, defenders of the deal say:
Alexandra Bell, a former Obama administration official who worked on compliance reports for the JCPOA, said that even if the intelligence from the archive is accurate and Tehran lied in the past, its behavior should be judged by whether it is complying with the deal now.
Because today the IAEA under the terms of the 2015 deal is no more able to detect Iranian nuclear weapons activity than it was back then.
Remember, the Iranians were never worried about the power of the IAEA to inspect them under the nuclear deal, as their deputy nuclear negotiator explained:
Araghchi goes on to explain how Iran could handle the 24-day process triggered if the IAEA suspect activities in non-nuclear facilities: "The IAEA has to present us with evidence as to why it thinks there have been illegal activities occurring. After this step, we need to negotiate. Other countries do the same. After the negotiations, if we are convinced, we might allow them access. In cases where their evidence is not entirely unfounded, we can even use substitute methods; for example, we will say we cannot allow you into the main facility but we can allow you access to the area behind it. The other method is for us to videotape it ourselves and present it to them. But if the IAEA refuses our offers and insists on access, this subject has been left unsaid in the Additional Protocol." [emphasis added]
As I've said, I think Iran is smart enough to want to get through the dangerous period when we know they can build a nuclear weapon (the "red line") but before they actually have nuclear weapons. That's a window for America or Israel to strike.
But once Iran has nukes, they could deter a strike. Iran wants to negate that window. I think the Iran nuclear deal is the means to close that window by pretending to halt nuclear weapons work to prevent an American campaign to destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure for the duration of the deal so that when the deal ends, Iran has the ability to deter a strike against a nuclear-capable Iran.
The failure to even know how close Iran was to nuclear weapons again raises the question of how we can ever meet the "imminent" standard that leads every person on the left to say "of course we would support military action at the last moment after all other solutions have been exhausted!"
Iran wants nuclear weapons. They were very close to getting nuclear weapons before the deal was made. Yet we are to believe that Iran agreed to the 2015 deal for the purpose of negating all that progress toward nuclear weapons?
The Iran nuclear deal is a key tool Iran gained to go nuclear. Ending the Iran deal by itself won't stop Iran. But ending the deal does stop our policy of pretending the deal stops Iran.
We have work to do now. Let's get rolling.
