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Report of Iran’s Nuclear Cheating Undermines American Support for Negotiations

by TheTower.org Staff |

A report published by Foreign Policy on Monday indicating that Tehran was caught breaching sanctions in order to advance its plutonium work is likely to deepen concerns in Washington at a time when the administration’s handling of the negotiations has been called into question by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The Foreign Policy story specifically reported that the Iranians had been found to be “increasing their efforts to illicitly obtain equipment for the IR-40 research reactor at the Arak nuclear complex.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) released a statement Monday afternoon in response to the Foreign Policy scoop:

The wheels seem to be coming off of the Administration’s Iran strategy. There are now multiple reports that Iran has violated its commitment to freeze its nuclear program. These include two separate reports that it was testing and operating centrifuges in violation of the interim agreement.

Tehran has on multiple occasions been found to have cheated on its obligations since the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) was signed last year, and the Foreign Policy report was met with something short of incredulity – The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg later echoed these sentiments on Twitter:

Veteran Associated Press reporter Matt Lee told State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki on Monday that the Iranians “seem to be doing everything they can to destroy any trust that there might be, and it seems a bit disingenuous to claim that they’re doing everything, that they’re complying with everything if in fact you suspect that they’re not with the JPOA or with the original UN sanctions.”

Administration officials had in the months after the interim agreement was inked in November 2013 issued a series statements voicing support for sanctions legislation in the event that Tehran was found to be cheating – Secretary of State John Kerry told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in December 2013 that if Iran cheated “we will be the first ones to come to [Congress] if this fails to ask you for additional sanctions.”

[Photo: PressTV / YouTube]

 

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