Iran Was Violating the Nuclear Deal Even Before the U.S. Withdrew https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/07/iran-was-violating-the-nuclear-deal-even-before-the-u-s-withdrew/

July 24, 2019 | Emily Landau
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To read the critics of the Trump administration’s current Iran policy, one might think that Tehran had fully observed the terms of the 2015 agreement until well after the U.S. renounced it, or even that it has not yet violated the terms at all. Not so, writes Emily Landau. While the Islamic Republic abided by limits on how much uranium it could enrich and on the size of its stockpiles of heavy water and already-enriched uranium, it violated the deal in ways that are in fact of greater concern, among them:

[T]he underground and heavily fortified uranium-enrichment facility at Fordow has not been reconfigured as stipulated by the deal. [Moreover], the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found traces of radioactive material from soil samples that were taken from the nuclear warehouse in Tehran in April 2019. [Such] incriminating evidence of radioactive material being stored there up until 2018 clearly [demonstrates] violation of the deal. Oddly enough, the IAEA has not yet released an official statement on this finding, nor did the agency include reference to it in its June 2019 report.

[There have, moreover, been] several reports from German intelligence services over the past few years regarding Iran’s continued efforts to procure equipment or materials that can be used in a nuclear-weapons program. The efforts were thwarted, but it is not clear why these ongoing Iranian efforts—including using front companies to hide the identity of the end user, Iran—are not garnering more international attention.

Iran has [also] installed 33 advanced IR-6 centrifuges, which is more than it should at year four of the deal. This issue exposes another difficulty with the agreement—language that is not entirely precise about whether this constitutes a violation of the deal or not, although it is surely not in line with the spirit of the deal.

The picture of Iran as the innocent party complying with the agreement, while the U.S. is in breach, is thus clearly inaccurate. The current tensions are not due to the Trump administration leaving the deal, but rather to the serious flaws in the deal that led the U.S. to withdraw, as well as Iran’s non-cooperative and bad-faith behavior that has continued since [the deal was finalized].

Read more on Times of Israel: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/iran-has-somewhat-complied-with-its-nuclear-deal/