There are reasons for concern regarding Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons – a priority for Tehran. Iran is working hard to develop nuclear weapons, and the flawed 2015 nuclear agreement by the Obama administration did not deter Iran from its path – nor could it have. Iran is a destabilizing influence in the Middle East. These are crucial considerations when determining courses of action to limit the number-one sponsor of terrorism.
It’s no secret that the Biden administration is keen on resurrecting the faulty Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in some form. However, more pressing national security issues like the crisis in Ukraine, China’s aggressiveness in the Indo-Pacific, and Israel’s war on the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas have risen to prominence. All the while, however, Tehran marched steadily toward the atomic age.
Nuclear Watchdog Agency Concerned About Iran
The topic of Iran’s nuclear ambitions gained some momentum recently with the release a report on Iran’s compliance with the tenets of the JCPOA from the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA). Despite the US having pulled out of the inadequate nuclear agreement, some semblance of the regulatory oversight on Iran’s development of the necessary mechanical and nuclear-fuel-related processes has continued. The level of oversight, however, has been significantly reduced.
“From 8 May 2019 onwards, however, Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA on a step-by-step basis until, on 23 February 2021, it stopped implementing them altogether,” the report states. However, the IAEA analysis also states regarding the paucity of information it has, “Since 16 February 2021, the Agency has not been able to verify Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile precisely on any given day, needing to rely instead on a small proportion of the total being based on Iran’s estimates.”
As it has been in previous IAEA reports on Iran’s nuclear program, the concern is the increase in speed and quantity of enriched, weapons-grade nuclear material Iran is producing.
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