In May, when Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by the limits set by the 2015 nuclear agreement on its enrichment of uranium, Europe found legal excuses not to react. When, earlier this month, the Islamic Republic went a step further, renouncing any limits on enrichment, the EU—led by France and Germany, both parties to the deal—at last initiated a formal process that might lead to the re-imposition of sanctions. Bobby Ghosh comments on the dangers of European apathy:

In their anxiety to keep the deal alive, and give their companies access to business deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the Europeans lost sight of [the deal’s] purpose: to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. The possibility of action was renewed when Iran stepped up enrichment, but Europe used the letter of the deal as an excuse to do nothing even as its spirit was being flouted.

Their reward from the regime in Tehran has been only scorn. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has derided Europe’s efforts to salvage the [nuclear agreement], dismissing them as a “joke,” and warning his countrymen to “give up all hope” that these would amount to anything.

Even now that Europe has acted, it could be weeks before sanctions go into effect, giving European nations ample opportunity to back down. Ghosh wonders if they will:

France seems to cling to the idea that the deal might yet be saved by discussion. Britain has come around to the Trump administration’s view that the deal is dead, and that a new one must now be negotiated. Absent the sudden excavation of a backbone, the most likely outcome is more dithering.

From Iran, meanwhile, has come only more—and more open—blackmail. Even President Hassan Rouhani, often touted as the regime’s kinder, gentler face, has descended to bald-faced threats. If the EU pressures Iran on its enrichment program, he said, “tomorrow, European soldiers may also be in danger.” As of this writing, the Europeans have not responded to Rouhani. Their hands, one imagines, are occupied with more wringing.

On Friday, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief scientist behind the Islamic Republic’s nuclear-weapons program, was killed in what appears to have been a carefully planned and executed operation—widely thought to have been Israel’s doing. In 2011, Fakhrizadeh was given a new position as head of the Organization for Defensive Innovation and Research (known by its Persian acronym SPND), which was a front for Tehran’s illegal nuclear activities. Richard Goldberg explains:

Last year, the State Department revealed that SPND has employed as many as 1,500 individuals, including nuclear-weapons scientists [who] “continue to carry out dual-use research and development activities, of which aspects are potentially useful for nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-delivery systems.”

How could Fakhrizadeh and SPND continue to operate during the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when the deal was premised on Iran’s commitment to an exclusively peaceful nuclear program? Indeed, the existence of SPND and the discovery of Iran’s nuclear archive [by the Mossad in 2018] paints a picture of regime that never truly halted its nuclear-weapons program—but instead separated its pieces, keeping its personnel fresh and ready for a time of Iran’s choosing.

That reality was deliberately obfuscated to sell the Iran nuclear deal. Iran-deal supporters wanted the world to believe that the ayatollahs had left their nuclear ambitions in the past. . . . We now know Iran lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency, [which is charged with policing Tehran’s compliance], and to the participants of the nuclear deal. Today, the IAEA is again investigating Iran’s concealment of undeclared nuclear material, activities, and sites.

President-elect Joe Biden can no longer pretend that the Iran deal prevented the Islamic Republic’s nuclear advancement. It did not. Nor can Biden’s incoming secretary of state or national security adviser—both of whom were instrumental players in putting the deal together—pretend that Iran can return to compliance with that flawed deal without addressing all outstanding questions about the archive, SPND, and its undeclared activities.