Iran deal can be effectively verified to prevent "sneakout"

Fortunately for the JCPOA, the refrain of an “anytime, anywhere” access may make for a great sound bite, but its utility is overstated by Cotton and other critics of the agreement. An access delay — even one of 24 days — wouldn’t make any material difference to the IAEA’s ability to detect undeclared nuclear activities.

When IAEA inspectors search for undeclared nuclear activities, they look for tiny traces of nuclear material on surfaces. Fortunately for them, nuclear material lingers. And, modern detection technology is so amazingly effective that minuscule traces of nuclear material can be detected years after nuclear activities took place. Countries have tried to sanitize facilities completely to remove every last trace of nuclear material. Iran did so at the Kalaye Electric Company after its secret nuclear program was revealed in 2002. Syria tried the same thing in 2007 after Israel bombed its plutonium-production reactor at al-Kibar. In both cases, the IAEA still managed to detect nuclear material. Those findings were critical to persuading the organization’s governing body to make a formal finding of noncompliance against both Iran and Syria.

Perhaps Iran has learned from its past mistakes and could do a better job of cleaning up nuclear material in the future and keeping its program secret. But, what’s clear is that perfect cleanup — if it were possible — would take many months. After just 24 days, the IAEA would have little difficulty detecting the residue from undeclared nuclear activities.

So, here’s the bottom line: The Iran deal doesn’t provide for anytime, anywhere access, but it does facilitate timely access anywhere — and that’s what needed for effective verification.

More than that, I believe that the terms of such a deal are of less importance to America’s national interests than how the nations of the Middle East respond to it. Since the election of Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran, I have believed that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamene’i, concluded that he did not need an actual nuclear arsenal because he calculated that there was little likelihood of either an American or Israeli attack and perhaps that Iran was far enough along toward being able to build a nuclear weapon as it needed to be given that threat environment. I also believe that Rouhani’s election convinced him that relieving the pressure of the sanctions on Iran’s economy was a higher priority than making further progress toward fielding a nuclear arsenal—so long as Iran did not have to give up its nuclear capability entirely and forever in return for the lifting of sanctions. Based on this analysis, I suspect that the Iranian government does not intend to cheat on any nuclear agreement or to use it as a cover to covertly acquire nuclear weapons as North Korea did, at least not for now or for the foreseeable future.

But what about secret facilities? The brute fact about unknown facilities is that we cannot know what we don’t know. No agreement can provide 100-percent confidence that Iran will not cheat at a secret facility. Indeed, no one can have 100-percent confidence today that Iran has not already built a nuclear bomb at a secret facility. What has prevented the Iranians from doing this so far has been Tehran’s judgment that such an undertaking would be discovered and that the United States would act decisively to deny them success. The keys to sustaining effective deterrence are (1) rigorous efforts by the intelligence agencies of the United States and its allies, and (2) a credible military capability to act if Iran dashes toward a bomb.

Since the agreement imposes the most intrusive verification and inspection regime ever negotiated, it will significantly add to the ability of intelligence officials to discover any prohibited activity and enhance the legitimacy of U.S. or other countries’ military actions to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons should it violate its commitments. Nonetheless, as experts and so-called experts debate a 24-day delay for direct inspections of suspicious activity, or insufficient answers about Iran’s earlier nuclear pursuits, no one should miss the larger truth: 99 percent of the work to assure that any Iranian cheating is discovered will be done by U.S. intelligence agencies and those of allies. That was true before the agreement and will remain so after—even though the new inspections regime will provide some helpful information and observations that would otherwise be unavailable.

Moreover, responding to Iranian violations need not depend on proof gathered by the IAEA on site. While an IAEA inspection that catches Iran red-handed would probably provide the strongest basis for going to the Security Council and re-imposing sanctions, the United States would not need to wait for IAEA confirmation of Iranian cheating. If the United States acquired reliable intelligence of Iranian violations that posed a serious security threat and could be shared with others, the nuclear deal enables Washington to go directly to the Security Council without waiting for IAEA access. Indeed, depending on the scale and time-urgency of the threat, the United States could choose to act on its own to penalize Iran.

Inspections are only one component of the JCPOA’s comprehensive monitoring system. Continuous surveillance of the entire nuclear supply chain, including the prohibition of sensitive imports other than those individually approved and monitored for legitimate purposes, will make it difficult for Iran to pursue an undetected covert enrichment program. To succeed, a covert program requires not just a single clandestine site but a substantial number of effectively hidden facilities and undetected movement of equipment and materials between them. It requires unaccounted-for or successfully diverted supplies of uranium ore, processed uranium, uranium gas, centrifuge components, and facilities designed to produce those supplies. The JCPOA’s layered monitoring system will greatly increase the likelihood of detecting one or more of the necessary elements of a covert program and provide a substantial deterrent to Iranian cheating.