Past deceptions tell us what we need to know
CRITICS of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Iran Lied” presentation on Monday quickly opined that it contained nothing new and, as it didn’t point to violations since the 2015 Iran deal, it showed, in fact, that Tehran is in full compliance.
The stunning display of a halfton worth of documents and computer files that Israeli intelligence managed to somehow steal from Iran is a trove that would be devoured by intelligence agencies and international inspectors — and they’re unlikely to just look for signs of “something new.”
Why? “To know your future you must know your past,” said the ever-quotable philosopher George Santayana.
Can we really trust we know Iran’s current nuclear status without accounting for what happened in the past? Not according to some who know how nuclear inspections actually work. It’s difficult to say whether Iran is advancing in its nuclear program without completely accounting for what it did before.
As Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a press call shortly before the Iran deal was signed, “When the agreement comes in force, there will be a complete declaration by Iran on its . . . past and current nuclear program. That’s the first prerequisite.”
Well, Iran never actually agreed to make such a declaration. Although the IAEA professionals know such accounting is necessary, American and European negotiators didn’t insist on it.
Instead, they bought generalized public declarations by Iranian officials. As Netanyahu showed in his presentation, those included statements by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and the ever-smiling Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. All said pursuing nuclear bombs is against their religion.
In fact, in order to sell the deal to the American public, American officials, led by then-Secre- tary of State John Kerry, even highlighted a religious edict, a fatwa, Khamenei supposedly issued to that effect.
And so, Iran never actually gave the IAEA, charged with inspecting its compliance with the deal, a full accounting of past nuclear activity. In addition, in some cases, as when inspectors attempted to visit the Parchin military base, Iran allowed only very limited access to suspected sites.
How would we know what Iran initially did at Parchin? “A comprehensive understanding of [past] work [there] is critical to setting a baseline for effective monitoring to ensure early detection if Iran resumes work on nuclear weapons,” Heinonen wrote last year in an essay with other proliferation experts.
Exposing Iran’s past lies is an important tool for inspectors in their pursuit of current truths.
On Monday, Netanyahu said the new trove contains evidence that Iran’s Project Amad was “a comprehensive program to design, build and test five warheads, each with 10 kilotons TNT yield, for integration on a missile.”
Did the program go away after the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, went into effect? If so, the 2015 deal deserves the accolades of those who continue chiming that the Iranians are “in compliance.”
But after establishing that the deal was based on past Iranian lies, and presenting new documentation to back it up, Netanyahu sounds more credible when he assesses that Iran is storing the material in a secret place “to use at a time of its choice to develop nuclear weapons.”
The more we know about how Iran deceived us in the past about the depth of its program and its true intentions, the less we can confidently argue that it is currently in “full compliance.”
By giving a pause to those, especially in Europe, who maintain that the nuclear deal is “working,” Netanyahu forced them to try harder to “fix” the JCPOA if they want President Trump not to “nix” it.
The deadline is May 12. Tick tock.