Nuclear negotiations in Lausanne in March, leading up to the nuclear deal. From left to right: Ernest Moniz, John Kerry, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Ali Akbar Salehi. Photo: Wikipedia.

Following a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday, according to which the Obama administration was aware that traces of uranium were discovered last year at Iran’s Parchin military facility — and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was unable to determine its scope and purpose — the organization The Israel Project (TIP), which educates the media about the Middle East, said this highlights the utter ineffectiveness of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between Tehran and world powers last July.

“One reason the IAEA can’t determine what happened is because — as part of the nuclear deal — the US collapsed on long-standing demands that the Iranians come fully clean on their past weapons work, the so-called possible military dimensions (PMDs) of their nuclear program,” TIP said, referring to claims in the report that the uranium found at the site was the “first physical evidence — on top of satellite imagery and documents from defectors — to support the charge that Iran had been pursuing a bomb…” 

Under the terms of the nuclear agreement, throughout the IAEA’s investigation — which was conducted between July and December 2015 — Tehran was able to prevent the IAEA from interviewing the country’s top nuclear scientists presumed to have overseen the nuclear-weapons development. The deal also gave Iran approval to self-inspect at Parchin, “passing along soil samples from pre-selected locations,” TIP said.

According to TIP, “Normally, if the IAEA doesn’t have enough evidence about likely weapons work, it just goes back and gets more. But the nuclear deal blocks further inspections. So the Iranians were doing weapons work, the IAEA doesn’t know what kind of work it was and the deal doesn’t force the Iranians to clarify. The result guts verification of the deal: IAEA inspectors can’t confirm Iran has halted its illicit weapons work, because inspectors don’t know what kind of illicit weapons work Iran was doing. There is no baseline to work from.” 

The JCPOA aimed to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite repeated denials from Iran that it only seeks nuclear abilities for peaceful purposes, top Iranian officials — such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — have vowed that nothing will stop the country from becoming a nuclear power.