IRAN’S NUKESCodifying Support for Nuclear Inspections in Iran

By David Albright

Published 21 May 2022

The main obstacle for a new nuclear deal with Iran is Iran’s disregard of its safeguards commitments and defiance of standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) procedures are more problematic for a nuclear deal. Resolving those outstanding inspection issues offers a far more promising pathway to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons in the long run.

The chances of a new nuclear deal with Iran are lackluster today, widely reported as resulting from the Biden administration’s refusal to delist the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity. However, that reporting is only partially true. Iran’s disregard of its safeguards commitments and defiance of standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) procedures are more problematic for a nuclear deal.

Resolving those outstanding inspection issues offers a far more promising pathway to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons in the long run. After all, there is widespread acknowledgment that a new deal will be weaker than the original 2015 nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). A new deal would amount to a short-lived arrangement with rapidly approaching nuclear and ballistic missile sunsets. Rather than focusing on a weaker deal than the JCPOA, a sounder strategy is ensuring that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, whether a remnant from the past or an active one in the present. The short-term priority should be determining whether Iran is willing to part from and surgically remove its nuclear weapons program or its remnants – of course, Iran would first have to reverse its vehement denials of ever having had a nuclear weapons program, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The IAEA offers a vehicle for such a process to occur, while simultaneously defending the international inspection regime at the heart of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The IAEA has made clear that it wants to resolve a series of inspection issues by early June when the next Board of Governors meeting occurs. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in a press conference in early March that it is difficult to imagine a nuclear deal being implemented if the IAEA’s efforts to clarify important safeguards issues fail. In mid-May, he reiterated that concern in front of a European Union parliamentary committee.