Yesterday the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that the Islamic Republic is enriching uranium to levels necessary only for the production of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Washington is still trying to negotiate a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal. But any agreement will depend on the IAEA’s inspectors to ensure compliance, and Iran has all the while been preventing these inspectors from doing their jobs. Andrea Stricker writes:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran agreed on Monday to extend for one month a monitoring agreement that was set to expire over the weekend. . . . Under the Iran-IAEA arrangement reached in February, Tehran would destroy the IAEA’s data and monitoring records if Iran did not receive sanctions relief from the United States and other world powers within 90 days. Now, Iran essentially threatens to erase the data around June 24 if Washington does not lift sanctions.
The Islamic Republic’s threats to destroy safeguards data amount to unprecedented extortion of the IAEA. Tehran has also put the agency in the position of permitting Iran to pick and choose which safeguards obligations it will fulfill. This sets a negative precedent for other states, which may also seek piecemeal safeguards.
The Biden administration should not grant Iran sanctions relief, which would reward and incentivize the clerical regime’s nuclear extortion. Lifting sanctions would effectively foreclose any chance that the regime will cooperate with the IAEA’s ongoing safeguards investigation, which is examining Tehran’s undeclared use of nuclear material at covert sites.
Read more on FDD: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2021/05/25/iran-extort-international-atomic-energy-agency/