Obama administration is acting as Iran’s attorney

Reuters reports that the Obama administration has been taking the Iranian side regarding a long list of violations to the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) as well as to U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“A U.N. panel of experts that monitors compliance with Security Council sanctions has repeatedly reported that Iran is suspected of buying equipment linked to the activities it is now negotiating to suspend,” Reuters reported. “But in its annual report in April, the panel said it had received no formal notifications from U.N. member states of Iranian breaches of sanctions, and suggested this may be because countries were trying to avoid damaging nuclear talks.”

Perhaps the most serious example of Iran’s cheating was the oxidation violation confirmed last week (and still denied by the Administration). The Iranians were obligated by the JPOA to turn all of their excess uranium gas (UF6), anything over 7,650kg, into dioxide powder (UO2) also known as yellowcake. But the Iranians converted it to a different type of oxide easily converted back to usable uranium.

In the JPOA factsheet, the requirement was broadly written as the Iranians having to create “oxide.” But there are different kinds of uranium oxide and this is an area where precision in very important. The Congressional Research Service noted that “Iran is also to, in effect, freeze its production of enriched uranium hexafluoride containing up to 5 percent uranium-235 by converting the material to uranium dioxide.”

Once it became news that the Iranians cheated on the conversion, the Obama administration went to work retroactively rewriting the deal on Iran’s behalf.

Last week, the State Department reported that Iran had complied with that key condition of the interim agreement and had significantly reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium, an accurate statement as long as one ignores Iran’s violations.