Nov. 07--International nuclear inspectors reported Friday that Iran still won't answer their questions about its past nuclear weapons research. It won't grant inspectors access to military sites. It won't allow inspectors to interview key nuclear scientists.
Iran's decade-long stonewall is intact -- even with a deadline looming in negotiations with the West to curb Iran's rogue nuclear program.
American and Iranian negotiators plan to huddle in Vienna later this month for a final push at a deal. Both sides should have motivation. President Barack Obama, drubbed in midterm elections and facing Republican control of the House and Senate, craves a foreign policy triumph. The Iranians want devastating Western economic sanctions lifted.
Under such a deal, Iran may ship much of its enriched uranium stockpile to Russia, rendering it essentially useless to make a nuclear weapon. In return, the U.S. may allow Tehran to run many more uranium-enriching centrifuges than American negotiators originally proposed.
But the new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency underscores a key Western demand that cannot be bargained away: A nuclear deal could leave the rest of the world vulnerable if Tehran is not required to provide a full accounting of its secret nuclear weapons research and allow international inspectors to scour military sites where Western officials suspect that work happened.
Inspectors need that access to answer key questions: Did Iran's nuclear weapons research taper off after 2003, as a U.S. intelligence report concluded in 2007? Or did the Iranians continue that research, somewhere secret, somewhere beyond the reach of intelligence detection?
Last year, the IAEA and Tehran agreed to resolve 12 broad areas of concern before the agency would or could declare Iran had fulfilled its obligations to come clean about its stealthy nuclear past. So far, IAEA director general Yukiya Amano said, there has been significant progress in only one area.
Negotiations with Iran have been "going around in circles," an exasperated Amano recently told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"What is needed now is concrete actions in the part of Iran to resolve all outstanding issues. ... This is not a never-ending process," he said.
Iran may hope to slide by in the nuclear bargaining, to admit nothing about its past and grudgingly allow inspectors limited access to monitor its future work.
U.S. negotiators should stand firm: Gauging how close Iran has been to building a nuclear weapon is vital. Here's why: A final deal must significantly extend Tehran's nuclear "breakout" time -- the weeks or months it would need to build a bomb without drawing the attention of nuclear inspectors. It must also ensure that Tehran can't secretly build a nuclear weapon outside of inspectors' gaze.
It will be difficult if not impossible for Western inspectors to accomplish these goals without knowing exactly how far Iran's scientists have advanced in nuclear weapons research, nuclear expert David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security told us.
"If Iran gets a deal without disclosing the past military dimensions of its program, it would continue to be able to say that there was never any military nuclear program and it was justified in denying inspectors access to military sites," Albright said. That creates a dangerous precedent: The Iranians could leverage that agreement to bar inspectors from suspected nuclear sites in Iran, simply calling them military sites.
Iran has not earned any trust. A deal that allows Iran to brush aside questions of its past violations of U.N. sanctions runs a real risk of inadvertently ushering Iran into the nuclear club. The U.S. and its Western partners should stand firm: Either Tehran comes clean about its past, as it has promised, or no deal.
