Trust Tehran?

Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has never been compliant with its terms. Amassing stockpiles of plutonium and enough 5%-enriched uranium, some of which can be enriched to the 20% level for the production of several bombs, it refuses the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors access to the nuclear facilities of utmost interest to that international vetting body.

"While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan ... By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan."
Iranian President Rouhani, 2011 memoir as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator

Long suspected of housing nuclear weapons research, the facility at Parchin, the site of a suspected massive explosion, has been off limits to the IAEA despite repeated requests by that UN inspection body for access. If Iran's repeated assurances are held at face value that its nuclear technology is meant for peaceful purposes only, it has been anything but transparent. Denial of access to sensitive sites by IAEA inspectors as good an indication as any that it has never, and never will be compliant.

Nuclear energy can be produced without plutonium or uranium, and no fewer than seventeen countries prove it by their production of nuclear energy. Much has been made of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's irritating U.S. President Barack Obama over his claims that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not to be trusted, and that it poses a grave danger to both the Middle East and the international community should it attain nuclear respectability.

That while under the pretense of wanting nothing other than to aspire to produce its own ample energy even while it is one of the world's largest oil producers, it plans to continue its nuclear program to the completion of nuclear warheads to complement the long-range ballistic missile program it is so fond of experimenting with. At the same time issuing threats that it plans to annihilate a UN member state in the Middle East.

This week the People's Mojahedin Organization in Iran (PMOI/MEK), opposing the theistic Apocalyptic Iranian regime of the Ayatollahs, announced that they have intelligence from sources within the regime that it has secretly engaged in research and uranium enrichment at yet another undisclosed nuclear site. Like the site deep underground at a mountain near the sacred city of Qom, another previously undisclosed underground site named Lavizan-3 nuclear facility, operational since 2008.
Satellite image of Iran's secret Lavizan-3 nuclear facility as revealed by satellite maps

NCRI representatives at their news conference disparaged the Iranian regime’s claim of transparency in the nuclear talks, warning that the Iranian regime is deceiving the international community. Research and development with advanced centrifuges in these highly secretive sites have one intention only; to advance Iran's nuclear weapons project. And that if the United States truly is serious about preventing Iran from reaching nuclear weapons status, the talks must be predicated on the IAEA's immediate entry to inspect the site.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed on Tuesday the details of an underground top-secret site currently used by Iranian regime for research & development on nuclear field using advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is intent on destabilizing the Middle East through attaining its goal of controlling the region through force and threat. Once in possession of nuclear weapons nothing will deter it from reaching that goal. And from there reaching outward toward the international community. Its reach enabled by the intercontinental ballistic missiles it is perfecting with their longer reach, eventually tipped with nuclear warheads.

Before that, Iran has jeered at Israel, claiming that one bomb would be all that would be required to destroy the entire state, whereas in the time given to Israel to respond, Iran's sacrifice would be minimal in comparison. Iran would survive a reciprocal attack, Israel would not. Not a statement to encourage confidence in the word of a peaceful Iran seeking peaceful nuclear civil technologies.

"They're not developing those ICBMs (ballistic missiles) for us. They can reach us with what they have. It's for you", Prime Minister Netanyahu elucidated for incredulously disbelieving Western ears. Iran has armed and financed Hezbollah, propped up Bashar al-Assad, and turned Baghdad into his proxy state, while aiding the Houthis to transform Yemen into a Shi'ite-led nation, effectively widening its hegemonic stretch.

In the world's tinderbox geography, Iran has become the world's most dangerous regime, promising that volatility will sooner or later explode into an unstoppable world catastrophe. And Iran has been enabled beyond dispute by the conciliatory efforts of President Obama who decided to push back his former Sunni alliances in the Middle East in favour of encouraging a Shia advance. The 'phased-in' pact that the U.S. has proffered would see sanctions eliminated.

The gradual lifting of restrictions on Iran's uranium enrichment program allows it to accelerate and weaponize that 'program for peace' as the agreement winds down, for the production of nuclear arms. According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies the think tank promoting a sturdy sanctions regime, the Interim Deal from Geneva in January 2014 had the world powers agree for Iran to enrich uranium and maintain it within Iran in contravention of a series of UN resolutions.

Demands that the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility be shuttered as well as the Arak heavy-water reactor (integral to producing nuclear weapons) have been forgiven. Iran's research and development arm obsessed with advanced centrifuges and the ballistic missile program for nuclear weapons delivery, full speed ahead as goodwill concessions. Which translates to the P5+1 advantaging Iran and Iran in turn giving up nothing whatever.

Who is the more skilled negotiator here, the canny, cunning Iran or the willfully blind and trusting West, worn out from haggling demands and tart threats?