"The nuclear deal reached on July 14, 2015 between six world powers and Iran is baffling. It raises many important questions and leaves others unanswered."

In a recent article, I argued that both supporters and skeptics of the Iran nuclear deal have overstated the importance of so-called “anywhere, anytime” inspections. Such access is not as important as a complete and correct declaration by Tehran of all its relevant nuclear activities, and access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the people and documents necessary to verify it.

A successful Iran nuclear agreement would have required far more than anywhere, anytime inspections, let alone the delayed, managed access with a 24-day duration provided under the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama hailed on Tuesday. What was essential is now conspicuously missing: Tehran’s submission of a complete and correct nuclear declaration, and the regime’s cooperation with IAEA efforts to verify it. Anything short of that is an illusion.

William Tobey, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes in the Wall Street Journal that the nuclear agreement with Iran does not provide stringent enough verification measures to ensure that Iran is abiding by the agreement. Specifically, he notes that in some cases, as many as twenty four days may elapse before inspectors arrive at a site to investigate, which will give Iran time to hide evidence of wrongdoing. He also argues that the deal fails by not requiring Iran to submit a full declaration of the past military dimensions of the program, meaning any actions that could have been carried out in the explicit pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Without this declaration, he argues, the agreement does not set a baseline for inspections, making it much harder for the deal to be enforced.

A good nuclear agreement with Iran requires that we know first, what work has Iran conducted toward nuclear weapons, and second, can we guarantee that Iran has stopped and will not resume this work. If these questions are not answered correctly and completely before the negotiations conclude, the resulting agreement will be illusory.

William Tobey, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, writes for the Iran Task Force that the emerging agreement with Iran over its nuclear program will be fatally weakened if it does not address issues of the past military dimensions of the Iranian program. He notes that while the IAEA has reported that Iran undertook a covert military program potentially related to nuclear weapons development and that the United States initially emphasized understanding all aspects of the PMD issue, Secretary of State John Kerry has appeared to back down from this demand, raising the specter that it will not be addressed in the final agreement. He argues that this is a mistake, as the US intelligence community does not have perfect confidence in knowing every aspect of the Iranian nuclear program, failing to understand every aspect of the Iranian program will hinder verification efforts, and the Iranian willingness to come clean on PMD issues is an important indicator of their willingness to comply with a final agreement.

William Tobey, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on lessons from prior arms control and disarmament agreements for the current negotiations with Iran. Using examples from Iraq, North and Libya, he identified five key patterns for arms control negotiators to be cognizant of, including the fact that decisions to disarm are usually incomplete and taken incrementally, deceptive actions by the proliferator can appear as progress, strong verification and intelligence measures can deter cheating while lax verification can encourage it, verification is built on checking declarations for inconsistencies, and inspections are only as effective as political support.  From these lessons, he identified three key lessons, including a complete declaration of nuclear activities is crucial, unwillingness to provide this declaration is evidence of Iran's willingness to comply with a full agreement, and successful agreements require vigilance over time, and cannot be considered solved after an agreement is signed.

Senior Fellow William Tobey testified before the Senate Foreign Relations committee discussing the history of past negotiations to prevent nuclear proliferation.

The horrific shooting of nine people as they prayed at a Charleston, South Carolina, church last week, by an avowed racist, has reopened the debate over the propriety of flying the Confederate battle flag across the street from the state capitol in Columbia. For those who work to defend the United States and to enhance its national security, this should be an easy call.

William Tobey, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes in Foreign Policy that it is crucial that the United States and the P5+1 press Iran on the Past Military Dimensions (PMD) of its nuclear program before any final agreement is completed. He argues that while the U.S. originally stated that PMD issues would be resolved before a final agreement, recent remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry have seemed to indicate that the U.S. is walking back its insistence on clarifying the the PMD of Iran's program. This is a mistake, he writes, because American, IAEA, and other national intelligence agencies do not know the entirety of Iran's past work, because understanding the PMD of the Iranian program is necessary for monitoring and verification in any deal, and because compliance with resolving the PMD issue serves as a litmus test for Iranian compliance with a broader agreement. He concludes that a failure to resolve the PMD question will fatally weaken any nuclear accord with Iran.