USA Today last week catalogued a range of indications that “Iran [is] advancing its nuclear program despite [a] pact with West,” describing how the Islamic Republic was “moving ahead with a nuclear program that U.S. officials said would be frozen” even as the sanctions relief granted under an interim agreement was eroding Washington’s leverage in nuclear negotiations.

“If Iranians believe they can erode the sanctions without making additional nuclear concessions, then the improvement in the economy makes a comprehensive deal less likely,” said Gary Samore, a former principal arms control adviser to President Obama.

The outlet also conveyed remarks from Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, assessing that “[t]he likelihood of a comprehensive deal on acceptable terms diminishes” as Iranian scientists advance the country’s nuclear program.

The combination of dynamics – ongoing erosion in financial pressure on Iran, coupled with continuing nuclear progress – has undermined the Obama administration’s insistence that it has sufficient pressure to compel Tehran into making substantive concessions. Critics have instead pointed to growing piles of evidence indicating the opposite. Under the terms of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) Iran is permitted to conducted unlimited enrichment of uranium up to low-enriched levels, considered the most difficult step on the way to creating weapons-grade material, as long as it oxidizes that portion of its stockpile and metaphorically puts it on the shelf. From there it can be taken down, quickly reconverted, and then further enriched. Tehran is also allowed to bolster its plutonium-producing facility at Arak, to develop next-generation centrifuges which would enhance its ability to rush across the nuclear finish line, and to advance its ballistic missile program.

Meanwhile steadily growing energy exports appear to be stabilizing the country’s economy, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently bragged that Iran was “open for business” despite pledges by Washington to retain so-called “core sanctions” against the regime.

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