Mossad found previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran. Doesn't this prove that the Iran deal is a failure?

The main mantra in support of the Iranian nuclear deal has always been - and continues to be - that the deal includes "the most intrusive inspections regime ever negotiated." The logic is that Iran can't possibly be working on a parallel and secret nuclear weapons program while opening up (some of) its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspectors.

The New York Times reports:

Israel is not finished with its lobbying campaign. Officials there said they planned to share much of the data they had harvested from the secret archive with the International Atomic Energy Agency — including data on some previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran.

If there are previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran that the IAEA itself is unaware of, then doesn't that prove that the current inspections regime is literally worthless?

Yet the NYT downplays the importance of such a discovery:

Israel’s intention appears to be to force the organization, a United Nations agency, to demand that the Iranians allow inspections of those sites, even though some of them may have been closed or dismantled years ago. Since Iran considers many of these military sites, the Israelis, and some American officials, expect the Iranians to balk at the demand — inciting another crisis for the deal.

Instead of noting that the existence of secret nuclear facilities is a huge red flag, the NYT throws up a smokescreen of claiming - with no knowledge - that many of these facilities may have been dismantled years ago.

And also it mentions in passing that Iran refuses to allow inspections of suspected nuclear research sites that Iran classifies as "military" - which was a huge red flag to the entire JCPOA plan when it was agreed upon, and also swept under the rug.

If Iran balks at a demand to allow inspections, then - the NYT logic goes - such inspections are better left undone. Otherwise, there could be a crisis!

What kind of logic is this?

“The Israeli prime minister’s presentation on Iran’s past research into nuclear weapons technology underlines the importance of keeping the Iran nuclear deal’s constraints on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said in a statement. “The Iran nuclear deal is not based on trust about Iran’s intentions; rather it is based on tough verification.”

How is "tough verification" possible when the IAEA doesn't even know all the sites to inspect?

All of the people who defend the Iran deal based on these "tough verification" should be at the forefront of insisting that Iran come clean about their secret nuclear facilities.

Their silence in the wake of Israel's intelligence coup - indeed, their derision of it - shows that for all their posturing about how wonderful the deal is, their intent is not to stop an Iranian bomb as they claim, but to mindlessly defend the indefensible.

The best summary of how absurd this "inspections regime" is can be found in this tweet: "Basically, with advance notice the cop is allowed to pull the car over to search for contraband, except it's forbidden to search the glove compartment."

The new Mossad revelations takes this analogy further - the cops aren't allowed to inspect the huge trailer behind the car either, since it isn't defined as being part of the car.

(h/t EBoZ)

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