Last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell: in January, Mossad agents stole some fifty-five thousand printed pages and 183 compact discs detailing Iran’s past convert nuclear weapons activities, by breaking into a warehouse and flying them out of the country. The significance of his disclosure was immediately controversial.

Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control & WMD, is a skeptic-turned-believer in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He speaks with Christiane Amanpour.

The Iran nuclear deal was officially implemented on Saturday, as Iran successfully fulfilled its initial key nuclear commitments and the international community relieved major sanctions, including unfreezing about $100 billion of Iranian money. Implementation Day was met with applause from deal supporters in the U.S. and Iran, while critics have raised questions about whether Iran will adhere to its requirements and how it will flex its newfound economic power. Also in recent days, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a prisoner swap that led to the freedom of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and others, and negotiated the release of American sailors detained in Iran. What does the arrival of Implementation Day mean for Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear nonproliferation, and how does it bode for the future of U.S.-Iran relations? We asked Belfer Center experts to weigh in on these and related questions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency released its “final assessment” yesterday of the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

Gary Samore, Director of Research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Ephraim Kam, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, examine the fate of the military option in the process of the Iranian nuclear talks. They discuss how from the beginning, American and Israeli understandings of the use and effectiveness of the military option against the Iranian program, and that while the United States sought to diminish the likelihood of a military attack during the negotiations, Israeli officials accused the US of diminishing the credibility of a potential military attack. While they recommend that the military option be strengthened going forward, considering the continued possibility that Iran will renege on its commitments and potentially try to construct a nuclear weapon, they recognize that many factors will influence whether or not the military option is employed against the Iranian nuclear program going into the future.

The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide has been produced in the interest of contributing to informed Congressional review and public discourse on a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It provides a concise description of the agreement and the accompanying UN Security Council Resolution 2231. It also includes a balanced assessment of the agreement's strengths and weaknesses with respect to its central objective to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The July 14, 2015 comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) consists of the agreement itself and five technical annexes: Annex I – Nuclear-related measures; Annex 2 – Sanctions-related commitments; Annex III- Civil Nuclear Cooperation; Annex IV – Joint Commission; and Annex V – Implementation Plan. The version issued by the EU is used here because pages and paragraphs are numbered in proper order.

This article describes the main elements of the JCPOA. In coming days, the Belfer Center plans to publish a more detailed description and assessment of the agreement.

Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Gary Samore, Director of Research at the Belfer Center, identify inThe National Interest four myths about the sanctions structure on Iran due to its nuclear program. Specifically, they argue that not all sanctions on Iran will be removed after a nuclear deal, that the sanctions are not clearly delineated between "nuclear" and "non-nuclear" related sanctions, that some sanctions on Iran such as a conventional arms embargo and targeting the Iranian ballistic missile program are not closely linked to the nuclear program but are addressing areas of continuing concern for the United States, and that in a final agreement many sanctions may be lifted, but will not be permanently removed, as they are codified in Congressional legislation.

The latest sticking point in nuclear negotiations with Iran has little to do with the issues that have captivated attention in Washington—centrifuges, uranium stockpile and inspections of military sites. Instead, it has focused on the intricacies of sanctions: the Iranian delegation has demanded that a United Nations embargo on conventional weapons and ballistic missiles be lifted. While the United States rejects such a concession, the Russians have reportedly broken ranks and support Iran’s position.