Abrams: Iran’s prior covert efforts to develop fissile material production capabilities related, from the beginning, not for peaceful purposes, but for nuclear weapons ambitions. Iran started its efforts to build a uranium enrichment capability hidden from the IAEA –

- by using equipment from A.Q. Khan. The material-production was part of a broader covert program that included work to design and build nuclear weapons. Today Tehran better positions itself to break out and produce the nuclear material those scientists would need for weapons.

Given Iran’s unprecedented obstruction of the IAEA, there must be consequences built-in to any deal that treats such obstruction with the seriousness it deserves. Verification of Iran’s compliance with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its IAEA safeguards...

agreements, including its Additional Protocol, is critical - and even more so for a closed country like Iran that regularly jails and even executes journalists. The IAEA is the one reliable mechanism we have to expertly and independently verify and monitor Iran’s nuclear program.

Whether one loves the JCPOA or hates it will soon be irrelevant. The major nuclear restrictions under the JCPOA begin expiring in five short years, and without a new deal, Tehran will have no obstacle to acquiring capabilities that all states agree the regime must not obtain.

We cannot afford another resigned approach to further sunsets of restrictions under the JCPOA, similar to the UNSC’s approach to the conventional arms embargo under UNSCR 2231. And simply re-entering the JCPOA without extending the duration of its key restrictions is pure folly.