Can a U.S. Deal Force Iran to Fess Up to the Military Dimensions of Its Nuke Program?

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.