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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Those claims are not verifiable (with open-source intelligence), they're possible, but not especially likely because the Israelis seem to have extensively infiltrated both assets and hardware into Iran (so they probably didn't need to infiltrate the IAEA). The claims are also somewhat suspect, as the Iranians were not fully cooperating with the IAEA even before the Israeli attacks. The most likely explanations are that the Iranians have been unable to uncover Israeli spies and are paranoid about IAEA, or that they just don't want to cooperate with the IAEA, and this is a good excuse.

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All true but it's also worth adding that we've given Iran zero incentive to work with the IAEA. If they're going to get sanctioned and attacked anyways..

It's a very difficult negotiation on either side, and I am not sure that a sustainable long-term deal is possible:

From the US/Israeli perspective, it's hard to trust Iran, which is positioning itself as a threshold nuclear state, and may attempt to secretly cross that threshold at any time (as North Korea did).

From the Iranian perspective, the government is fearful of infiltration and overthrow, as well as outright invasion, remembering that non-nuclear states have been undermined by the USA and allies (as happened in Libya).

The US/Israel haven't earned trust themselves by their actions though.

There were ongoing negotiations which unsurprisingly have now ended.

There are no clear indications Iran was in breach and they levels of enrichment were allowed by the terms. Although that was part of the point of the negotiations which the US wanted to raise.

The USA had abandoned the prior deal some time ago, and was not party to any current agreement which authorized any Iranian nuclear activities. Thus Iran was neither in compliance or abeyance of any agreement with them.

Iran has not earned much trust with anyone either; they’ve been supporting the Russian aggression in Ukraine (where nuclear strikes have been repeatedly threatened), as well as sponsoring non-state actors which have attacked the USA and Israel.

Yes, true. You are right that the US exited the JCPOA under Trump in 2018 and hasn't rejoined a new deal. So not direct agreement between Iran and the US on enrichment limits.

But, Iran is still legally bound by the NPT and IAEA safeguards, which require transparency around nuclear technology with the other parties who remain.

Prior to Israels attacks there were also indications the US was about to re-enter negotiations. That went up in smoke and likely motivation of the attacks.

What do you mean about "no clear indications Iran was in breach"? Iran was in breach of its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, according to a resolution by the IAEA board [1].

> Finds that Iran’s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 [...] constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency

[1] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-38.pd...

> positioning itself as a threshold nuclear state, and may attempt to secretly cross that threshold at any time (as North Korea did).

As Israel did.

Agreed. Even as someone who thinks the strikes were justified this was an inevitable outcome. Iran was trying to get as far as they could with their enrichment without provoking a military response. Once there was a military response there was no reason to cooperate.

There might still be room for diplomacy and reentering IAEA. But since Iran leaving the IAEA strengthens their bargaining position this is a logical move for them.

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