UN members withholding info on Iran violations

Apparently neither the Obama Administration nor any of the other members of the P+5 teams negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran wants a silly thing like violations of nuclear sanctions to hurt the potential deal. According to the United Nations sanctions panel, member states have stopped reporting Iranian violations “to avoid any possible negative impact on ongoing negotiations between … Iran and [major powers].” 

Reuters reported the panel’s concern as the Senate debated the revised Corker-Menendez bill that will require any nuclear agreement with Iran to be reviewed by the Senate.

The U.N. panel complained that it had received no new reports from U.N. member states of confirmed cases of non-compliance involving Iranian nuclear procurement. It reported the lack of such reports could be due to multiple reasons including not wanting to disrupt the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

“The current situation with reporting could reflect a general reduction of procurement activities by the Iranian side or a political decision by some member states to refrain from reporting to avoid any possible negative impact on ongoing negotiations between … Iran and [major powers].”

The report continued: “Despite the lack of newly confirmed violations the panel said, some member states informed the panel that according to their assessment, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s procurement trends and [sanctions] circumvention techniques remain basically unchanged.

“It cited an example of an unnamed member state saying that an Iranian entity had recently attempted to acquire compressors, a key component in the uranium enrichment process, using false end-user certificates in an attempt to evade controls.”

In other words Iran’s ongoing illicit activities are unchanged, and yet there’s been a complete drop off — zero new reports — from member states that are supposed to track those activities.