Iran was hiding nuclear material during the duration JCPOA was active. They were declared in violation of the NPT by the IAEA recently for actions undertaken between 2009-2018.
You're right that the IAEA has indeed pointed to Iran's past undeclared nuclear material and activities, leading to NPT safeguard violations for the 2009-2018 period. However, it's also important to distinguish between those historical undeclared issues and the specific JCPOA compliance. For the duration it was active and before the US withdrawal, the IAEA consistently verified that Iran was adhering to its JCPOA commitments regarding its declared program. The argument is often that while those past issues were concerning, the JCPOA still provided a robust framework for monitoring Iran's active program, which was then dismantled
Iran was objectively not in compliance though [1]. The IAEA just didn’t know they weren’t so they gave Iran a seal of approval. Israel had always claimed that Iran was hiding material, which convinced Trump to leave the JCPOA, but the IAEA could only corroborate it later.
Perhaps we should be making the argument that Trump shouldn’t have only gonna off of Israeli intel, but he ended up being correct that Iran wasn’t correctly reporting their enrichment stockpile, which was a provision of JCPOA. The reason why JCPOA wasn’t revived is actually because of Iran refusing to cooperate about what they did with the undeclared nuclear material.
Yeah, that's not very honest position. You have to decide if you want to squeeze them out or make things right.
If they hid things and the agreement wasn't just trashed, that could have been a scandal that gets resolved on the path to peace. It could happen for many reasons, maybe they don't trust the West to uphold their part and wanted an insurance policy, maybe it was division within. It doesn't matter that much, it's not like they made the bomb already and were about to hit once everyone lowers their guard.
Later what we had was Iran that was on the table, trying to play nice and that was destroyed probably because of the ego of a guy who couldn't handle to stick with the agreement signed by someone he hates.
Interesting way to play nice by having dozens of secret sites that nobody knew about (nuclear archive) and recently taking enrichment to 60% (they've been caught with over 80%) and dabbling in metallization which have only military applications.
Well, whoever did that was proven right(from their standing point + Ukraine). Apparently you can't trust USA and give up your nukes. If you don't have nukes they don't honor the agreements and guarantees and even bomb you.
Unfortunately the American attitudes will result in proliferation. Not the Iranian ones.
Giving up nukes was never the intention. They would've slow-boiled the frog and we would one day wake up with a nuclear iran (with icmbs! - not banned under jpoa) if they were smart about it like dprk. Unfortunately for mullahs they weren't and got cocky and overextended. Then 10/7 happened and the rest is like they say history
Maybe or maybe not, we will never know that. Who knows how things play out when a country is integrated back in the international system and have something to lose when if get caught on checks. Maybe there would have been a book about how Iran continued its clandestine nuke program but eventually dismantled it as its society and economy normalized and having that had no benefits.
Now we know the timeline where agreements are not honored by the US.
Look, I don't know why you believe so much in the imaginary timeline but maybe Iran would have been like Israel: having the bomb and not talking about it.
Who knows, it's all speculation at this point. The current reality is that if you don't have a nuke you get invaded. Everyone will have nuke soon. Those who fail will be destroyed because agreements, international laws etc doesn't mean anything anymore.
Why are you suddenly arguing against Israel? I mean he’s we know they have hidden nuclear weapons and will not enter into any deals or allow inspection. But they are on our side so we don’t care about that.
silly argument. iran is not a tiny country surrounded by much larger countries that want to run them into the sea. they should have invested that 500B into conventional forces instead - be a lot safer for that as a country (except that would threaten the regime).
For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
> For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
Very insightful, but the iranian minister had already started talks with the EU regarding the nukes[1], when Trump came in the bar and said "no you talk with us"[2]. So I don't know exactly the starting of what you're talking about.
Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out.