The Iran Man Behind the Nuclear Curtain

Video Above: Assistant Sec. of Army Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Talks Hypersonic Weapons

By Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland and Warrior Maven, Nuclear Weapons, Senior Analyst 

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) may be resurrected, but opposition is coming from an unusual place. After years of minimal constructive input, the UN International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) has suddenly found a voice – that of its Director General, Raphael Grossi, who insists Iranian nuclear weapons work be fully revealed and inspections not be “paused,” and thus abandoned, as Iran presently insists.

Grossi and the IAEA are concerned by the presence of unexplained uranium particles in Iranian facilities built and operated for the 1989 AMAD nuclear weapons program. The program, ostensibly ended in 2003, has long been thought to have continued with both overt and covert nuclear activities, a theory given weight by documents smuggled out of Iran by Israel in 2018. In June 2022, the IAEA reported on the uranium particles and admonished Iran – which responded by turning off IAEA cameras inside the facilities.

The IAEA’s concern is welcome, late and mild as it is.

Supporters of a new JCPOA admit the Iranian position is “problematic.” The UN arms embargo on Iran expired in 2020, the snapback sanctions provision expires in 2025, and all restrictions expire in 2030. But, they argue, the US then would be no worse off with the JCPOA than without it, as Iran would have the ability to quickly produce enough nuclear weapons fuel for a nuclear warhead with or without the deal.

Thus, they argue, the US has nothing to lose and it just might be that in the intervening eight years, the Iranian economic sanctions, having expired, would lead to Tehran become more integrated into the world economy with “more butter” rather than “more guns” guiding the Iranian leadership. [The same strategy that thought China’s accession to international institutions and trade with the US would result in the “peaceful rise” of Chinese power.]