Tehran's Taqiyya

"The requirement for detailed information about all past activities need not be quite so demanding [if] monitoring arrangements can provide strong confidence in compliance going forward."
Robert J. Einhorn, Brookings Institution, 2009-2013 nonproliferation adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Monitoring was fairly focused in the years leading up to the discovery of the Fordow enrichment plant buried deep beneath a mountain near the holy city of Qom, the better to withstand air attacks, its presence completely unknown by the international community and the UN's IAEA. So much for monitoring, and Iran's penchant for covert operations in the knowledge that their nuclear technology is in bad odour worldwide simply because their rationale is suspect.

The Obama administration, in spearheading negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, alongside the P5+1; (U.S., France, Britain, China, Russia, and Germany), has ingratiatingly, along with Russia, led the world into a far more dangerous place than it would have been had an alert and determined international community refused to allow Iran to perfect its nuclear program. It will be a wretched legacy that a subsequent American administration will have to deal with, at a more difficult angle.

Iran has 'agreed' to reduce its uranium enrichment capacity to delay its "breakout time"; which is to say how expeditiously it might produce material for a nuclear weapon; from two months to nine months. Also 'accepted' was a 'rigorous' inspections regime to ensure it is not, in fact, enriching uranium beyond the limit imposed. Or also developing mechanical components for a bomb.

Who knows? While Iran has reluctantly agreed for the IAEA to have access to nuclear sites, it will not permit access to its leading nuclear-military site, the Parchin  military base though this makes the International Atomic Energy Agency rather nervous and it would much prefer to investigate the site if it had its 'druthers.

The agreement will enable Iran to set at close grasp its threshold of bomb production until it deems the time is right to make that final move. At a time when energy-hungry Europeans are distracted by other issues of note, and a disinterested United States has geared its attention toward Asia and must then react in response to the realization that weapons production is underway. Fearful of a hostile response from Iran at that juncture, thinking of 'normalization' with a regime that sponsors terrorism in Syria and Gaza and abroad through Hezbollah.

Resolution of future potential disputes through implementation of the agreement will be overseen by a nine-member committee of three P5+1 delegates, three Iranian delegates, and three selected by mutual consent; obviously given the advantage to the Islamic Republic of Iran in sheer force of numeric representation. Would they veto any Iranian enterprise? Some supervision of the implementation of the agreement that represents.

While Iran ramps up its enrichment capacity, it can also continue developing advanced centrifuges up to six times more powerful than the first-generation types comprising the majority of its current 19,000 centrifuges. The agreement does not require Iran to destroy any centrifuges that present in excess of its quota throughout the 19-year agreement; it must move them into International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring storage; where? inside the Natanz enrichment facility.

And if Iran goes into a tizzy of non-cooperation and locks the IAEA out of its monitoring capacity? Obviously, in such a situation the centrifuges would be reinstalled with the inspectors locked out, to make their push for the bomb. Nor must Iran close its Fordow enrichment facility; only to remove the centrifuges to Natanz for use within that subterranean fortress for "research and development". Iran is big, really big on research and development.

The United states once demanded that Fordow be closed; no longer, as long as Iran accepts conditions that "constrain the ability to quickly resume enrichment there". It has as well backed off its once non-negotiable demand that Iran dismantle excess centrifuges completely. Iran should be pleased and perhaps it is, to a degree, though one might never know it from hearing its Supreme Leader fulminate on how Iran will never bow to Western demands.

A handout picture released by the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on May 11, 2014 shows him (C) being surrounded by military commanders while visiting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force exhibition in Tehran. AFP PHOTO/HO/IRANIAN LEADER'S WEBSITE

Discreetly, the IAEA has other concerns relating to Iran's ongoing development of ballistic missiles and problems relating to "possible military dimensions" of Iran's past nuclear work. The IAEA has revealed that Iran has taken "several actions" in other areas, where "work continues", an obviously oblique reference to troubling discoveries, albeit not specifically stated, since the P5+1 has no wish to have their negotiation applecart that is going so swimmingly upturned, the apples scattered.

Last year Iran promised it meant to clarify its need for Exploding Bridge Wire detonators. They do have seemingly innocent applications, but theoretically they can also be used in a bomb.

Satellite photo, Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant

Diplomats in Vienna speak quietly of the detonators issue. "If things were on track, the agency and Iran would have agreed, or would be on the cusp of agreeing, the next round of measures", said one Vienna diplomat. "It would seem at the moment that that hasn't been arrived at yet, which is disappointing if that is the case."