On Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its eighth quarterly report on the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the 2015 nuclear agreement is formally known. Although the document does not mention any evidence of violation of the deal’s terms, write David Albright and Andrea Sticker, it is “so sparse in detail that it is impossible to conclude that Iran is fully complying.” The IAEA, they explain, has simply not been able to conduct the inspections necessary for verification:

This report and its predecessors are deficient in reporting on the verification and monitoring of the JCPOA overall, including Section T, which entails additional Iranian declarations and access to Iranian military sites associated with banned nuclear-weapons-development activities and associated, controlled dual-use equipment [i.e., equipment that can be used for either civilian or military nuclear programs]. . . .

The IAEA overall appears to [embrace] a limited interpretation of its mandate to verify the JCPOA in what must be viewed as a stunning reversal of safeguards practices applied in countries such as South Africa and Taiwan, where it has periodically revisited sites associated with past nuclear-weapons work. . . . The IAEA’s stance on this issue in Iran is likely to be to the detriment of both the verification and the future of the JCPOA. It may also be to the detriment of future arms-control agreements and monitoring efforts involving states such as North Korea. . . .

IAEA officials stated to the media that the agency has not visited military sites in Iran to verify the absence of military nuclear-related activities and to inspect sites previously associated with such activities. [Instead, the report] states that [inspectors] had access to the sites they “needed to visit.” [Thus] the IAEA appears to be accepting a limited, counterproductive interpretation of its mandate to verify the JCPOA.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.