The Virtuous Nuclear Agreement with Iran

"The terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] did not create the desired paradigm of 'verify then trust' but of 'trust and verify only to the extent the Iranians allow it'."
"...The nuclear deal does not guarantee physical inspections of military sites even if the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] believes Iran is conducting weaponization activities. Before the announcement of the nuclear agreement, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated, 'inspection of our military sites is out of the question'. And after the JCPOA was announced, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pronounced that Iran had accomplished its objective of denying IAEA access to military facilities."
"In September 2015, IAEA director general Yukiya Amano visited the Parchin military base. Rather than conduct on-site inspections with the physical presence of inspectors at the location, which is the IAEA's standard practice, Iranian inspectors took environmental samples while IAEA inspectors remotely monitored."
"Even so, the environmental samples from Parchin revealed the existence of man-made uranium particles. William Tobey, former deputy administrator for defence nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, explained that these particles are 'prima facie evidence' of undeclared nuclear material in Iran and that a 'larger quantity of uranium left them behind'. Yet the IAEA did not insist on a followup inspection."
"The JCPOA also creates a minimum of a 24-day delay between a formal IAEA request to access a suspicious site and t he date Iran must allow access, which is more than enough time, according to nuclear experts, to destroy or hide evidence."
Sheryl Saperia, director of policy, Canada, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

"[Washington's abandonment of a] major achievement in nuclear non-proliferation and diplomacy [is lamentable. The accord has] contributed to regional and international peace and security."
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

 
The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China are displeased that U.S. President Donald Trump made good his campaign promise to take American support away from the nuclear agreement reached with Iran under the pretext that the agreement would result in a less intransigent, bellicose and threatening Islamic Republic which might reconsider its support for terrorism and interference in Middle East sectarian conflicts. Since the implementation of the agreement when hundreds of millions was restored to Iran frozen in international accounts, the promise given to Iranians that their economic strictures would be eased, has never materialized.

Trump made good on his promise, the theocratic regime failed to do so on theirs. The money instead gave them the freedom to continue funding and arming terrorist groups in Yemen (Houthis), Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas). Funding to provide upgraded military weaponry to the Syrian regime of President Bashar al Assad to enable him to get on with the vital task of slaughtering Syrian Sunni rebels against his Shiite rule. Funding to enable Iranian-linked Iraqi politicians to greater influence in Iraq to bolster Iran's Shiite crescent, threatening the majority Sunni population in the Middle East.

Ayatollah Khamenei's supportive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been enriched alongside Khamenei, taking over vital state operations as well as corporate production nationwide. The protests by Iranian workers over poor wages and inflated prices for staples, medicines, food and energy, have been ongoing for months, alongside a women's campaign to be free from the state-ordered dress code that transforms them from humans into unseen ciphers. But according to the P5+1 negotiators for the Iran nuclear agreement, the decision by the U.S. to leave the deal represents a global catastrophe.

Members of Iran's parliament burn a U.S. flag in Tehran on Wednesday. (AFP / Getty Images)

The co-signers, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russian, China and the E.U. are determined to continue to uphold the agreement, minus the U.S. American sanctions re-institution will take months and eventually will result in the U.K., France and Germany having to make a choice between U.S. banking and finance rules and continued profitable trade with the Iranian Republic. Insisting that the agreement has resulted in "regional and international peace and security", these nations extol the virtues of the agreement and value the opportunity it gives them to enhance trade opportunities.

The regional and international peace and security that presumably pairs with implementation of the agreement cannot be detected on the ground, and must therefore exist entirely in the feverish imaginations of the administrations of the co-signees. Trade with Iran has risen from 2015's high of $9.2 billion to a soaring $25 billion in 2017. That kind of trade profitability sacrificed for the paltry return of upholding human rights and the safety of the world community from a conquest-determined Iran appears too high a price to pay.

As far as Canada is concerned, Iranian parliamentarians' burning of a paper American flag, chanting their usual pathological "Death to America!" is understandable from an affronted regime for whom the deal represents to the west "the best tool to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability", according to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. To which her boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau adds he regrets President Trump's decision to withdraw America from the controversial agreement.

"We will respect the capacity of individual countries to make their decisions about foreign policy. But for Canada's purpose, we make our decisions around foreign policy here in Ottawa, not in Washington, not elsewhere." Explicable, given that Justin Trudeau has promised to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Iranian Republic, which his predecessor, Stephen Harper, chose to relinquish, in view of Iran's human rights record, and its  unquenchable thirst for power and threat to destroy the State of Israel.

Trudeau's administration is working studiously to 'normalize' relations with Iran in view of lucrative trade opportunities. Leading him to rebuke both the Trump administration and Israel over their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. An interesting perspective indeed, with Israeli defence officials ordering bomb shelters be operational on the Golan Heights after suspicious movements of Hezbollah units near the Israeli border after President Trump's announcement. Since then a barrage of rockets was fired from the Syrian into the Israeli side. Leading the IDF to reciprocate exponentially to destroy established Iranian military sites in Syria.