{"id":11817,"date":"2023-09-06T12:47:55","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T17:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whia.us\/?p=11817"},"modified":"2023-09-06T12:48:58","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T17:48:58","slug":"the-bad-and-good-news-about-irans-nuclear-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whia.us\/en\/11817\/","title":{"rendered":"The bad and good news about Iran\u2019s nuclear program"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WHIA- Washington Examiner<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Opinion by Daniel DePetris<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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T<\/span>he\u00a0International Atomic Energy Agency<\/a>, the world\u2019s chief nuclear watchdog, leaked snippets of its latest quarterly report about\u00a0Iran\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0nuclear program last week. The picture is, at best, murky: good news wrapped in bad news, wrapped in confusion and ambivalence about the way ahead.<\/p>\n

First, the bad news: Tehran remains extremely uncooperative with the IAEA\u2019s investigations about its past\u00a0nuclear<\/a>\u00a0work. Despite an agreement\u00a0in March<\/a>\u00a0that sought to improve the nuclear agency\u2019s ability to do its job, Iran has yet to implement fully what it signed onto. The IAEA has reinstalled some, but not all, of the cameras the Iranians previously ripped out in retaliation for U.S. sanctions. The information scooped up by those cameras\u00a0is being kept by Tehran<\/a>, which means the IAEA can\u2019t even see the footage.<\/p>\n

The investigations are stalled due to a lack of Iranian cooperation. IAEA staffers are having difficulty getting the required documentation to enter Iran, and Tehran\u2019s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium continues to grow in the meantime. All of this led the IAEA to\u00a0inform the board<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cno progress\u201d has been made in monitoring Iran\u2019s nuclear activities.<\/p>\n

Now, the good news: As uncooperative as the Iranians are, Tehran has nonetheless dialed back some technical aspects of its nuclear work. The Iranians\u00a0aren\u2019t adding<\/a>\u00a0many more advanced centrifuges. While Iran\u2019s stock of 60% enriched uranium has grown, the increase was marginal compared to the previous quarter, slowing from 20 kilograms per month to 6.5. Some may view this decrease as irrelevant, but it does represent a faint degree of hope to U.S. officials who have spent years working on the Iran file, often with little to show for it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is highly unlikely to be revived, Washington and Tehran are still keeping communication nodes open in an attempt to explore a more informal arrangement. Such an arrangement goes beyond Iran\u2019s nuclear program, the core U.S. concern, and into other lanes, such as prisoner releases and U.S. sanctions enforcement on Iran\u2019s oil industry. The term \u201cgrand bargain\u201d would be a stretch, but it\u2019s not entirely inaccurate.<\/p>\n

Last month, after more than two years of talks, the U.S. and Iran\u00a0agreed to a prisoner exchange deal<\/a>\u00a0that freed five wrongfully imprisoned Americans and unfroze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue stuck in a South Korean bank. (The Biden administration insists it will have oversight over how Iranians spend the cash, although the\u00a0Washington Examiner<\/i>\u00a0is\u00a0extremely\u00a0skeptical<\/a>\u00a0of such claims.)<\/p>\n

There hasn\u2019t been a single Iranian-sponsored attack against U.S. forces in Iraq or Syria since March, when an American contractor stationed in northeastern Syria\u00a0was\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0after Iranian-backed militias launched a drone attack on a U.S. base there. The Iranians are also selling more crude oil than earlier in the year;\u00a0Bloomberg<\/i>\u00a0recently\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that U.S. officials privately confirmed that Washington has relaxed sanctions enforcement against Iranian barrels.<\/p>\n

That last sentence is particularly infuriating to Iran hawks on Capitol Hill and across the constellation of think tanks in Washington, D.C. At first glance, it seems utterly odd, if not scandalous, for the U.S. to undermine its own sanctions programs. And yet what so many critics fail to recognize is that the so-called undermining is a deliberate policy choice meant to deescalate a situation that could easily turn hot. It\u2019s a highly controversial move, no doubt, but one that could pay dividends if it compels Iranian proxies to stop taking potshots at U.S. forces and nudges Washington and Tehran toward a more comprehensive negotiation. The U.S., in other words, isn\u2019t doing this out of the goodness of its heart; it\u2019s doing it to entice the Iranians into acting more responsibly.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong: In an ideal world, none of this would be required. In an ideal world, the U.S. wouldn\u2019t have to bribe Tehran with billions of dollars of its own money to get Americans out of Iran\u2019s prison system. Ideally, Iran wouldn\u2019t be arresting Americans on bogus espionage charges in the first place. Ideally, from Iran\u2019s perspective, the U.S. would recognize that the Trump-era maximum pressure strategy was an abysmal failure and lift all of the economic sanctions as an act of contrition.<\/p>\n

But guess what: We don\u2019t live in an ideal world. In lieu of the impossible, the best we can do is tinker with our strategies in order to get results that are \u201cgood enough.\u201d And as much as we may wish otherwise, \u201cgood enough\u201d is the most we hope for when the U.S.-Iran relationship is concerned.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Daniel\u00a0DePetris\u00a0(@DanDePetris<\/a>) is a contributor to the\u00a0<\/i>Washington Examiner’s\u00a0Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the bad news: Tehran remains extremely uncooperative with the IAEA\u2019s investigations about its past\u00a0nuclear\u00a0work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[142,199,128],"tags":[],"series":[1027],"coauthors":[238],"class_list":["post-11817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-most-important-topics-en","category-top-stories","category-updates-en","series-whia-synergy"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/whia.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/ira.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/whia.us\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/whia.us\/en\/feed\/podcast\/whia-synergy","embedCode":"

The bad and good news about Iran\u2019s nuclear program<\/a><\/blockquote>