I'm talking about the sanctions that the article is, i.e. the pre-deal ones that Meng Wanzhou is accused of violating.

That said, the stated reason for the current sanctions is still nuclear weapons [0]. An accurate evaluation of why the US chose to withdraw from that deal is probably not possible with publicly available information. The limited analysis in your comment seems to assume that the deal was effective, something I don't think we have enough information to reliably evaluate, but I consider unlikely.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/trump-speech-...

We absolutely have enough information to judge the deal effective: Has Iran detonated a bomb? No.

Before the deal (5 years ago), we were hearing that Iran was ~18 months away from a bomb. Yet, no bomb so far. Looks like the deal has been in the black for at least 3.5 years, to me.

The reason for pulling out of the deal had everything to do with domestic politics and, on a disorganized level, a bunch of yahoos' power fantasies. Nothing to do with Iran's behavior.

The metric of "has Iran detonated a bomb yet" is far to simplistic. What we should care about isn't how quickly Iran gets a bomb, but the probability that it ever does.

To see this via a argument to absurdity suppose that we had an alternate deal that was magically enforced and said "Iran will cease development of nuclear weapons for 10 years, and then we will give them an ICBM or two with warheads on top".

And, I mean, it's certainly possible that it was just a bunch of yahoo's and the deal was effective. It's also possible that the USes various spy agencies have information that made people legitimately concerned about the status quo. It would be outright negligent of the government to tell us (and thus Iran) which it is.

But they were on pace to have a bomb by now. And they don't.

So the deal is, at the absolute least, better than not having a deal. Or at least it was until we unilaterally tore it up after getting what we wanted.

> That said, the stated reason for the current sanctions is still nuclear weapons

Of course. And I think it's a blatant lie.

> The limited analysis in your comment seems to assume that the deal was effective, something I don't think we have enough information to reliably evaluate

The IAEA opinion is that we do, and that Iran has complied with the terms of the deal.

The IAEA opinion that I've seen is limited to "Iran has complied with the terms of the deal", not "the public has enough information to evaluate that the deal was effective at stopping nuclear weapons", or even "the deal is effective at stopping nuclear weapons development". The latter two (especially the middle one) being outside of the scope of what they discuss.

It's possible I missed something, I would be surprised though since the IAEA is pretty tight lipped. To quote an IAEA statement [0] made a week before the US withdrew from the deal

> In line with standard IAEA practice, the IAEA evaluates all safeguards-relevant information available to it. However, it is not the practice of the IAEA to publicly discuss issues related to any such information.

[0] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/statement-on-i...

The deal was negotiated and signed by US, Russia, China, France, UK, Germany, EU; and it is based on the "IAEA safeguards", a system of inspection and verification of the peaceful uses of nuclear materials as part of the NPT.

To suggest that all the major world powers would have signed a deal that leaves space for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and that the IAEA might have been happily certifying the compliance to the terms of the deal without bothering to make sure that Iran isn't actually developing nuclear weapons, would be supremely naive.

A more complete quote from the IAEA statement that you quoted is:

"The Agency’s overall assessment was that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assessed that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities. The same report stated that the Agency had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009. Based on the Director General’s report, the Board of Governors declared that its consideration of this issue was closed."

In fact, what IAEA is diplomatically saying is "we don't give a damn what Netanyahu claims, we have reports and information that proves that the claims are not true and we don't have to discuss it any further".

> we have reports and information that proves that the claims are not true

I don't this is an accurate summary, rather it says

> we don't have reports and information that proves Iran is continuing to develop weapons.

And why would they? They aren't a spy agency, they are a monitoring agency. Assuming for the sake of argument that Iran was actively developing nuclear weapons they would have had to fuck up for the IAEA to be aware of it. The IAEA's purpose in all this is to force them to be circumspect, not to catch them if they are being sufficiently circumspect.

The United States also ignored the results of the IAEA's nuclear weapon investigation in Iraq, and invaded them anyway [0]. The United States never found any nuclear weapons, and sentiment of the appropriate subject matter experts today still remains that there were never any nuclear weapons.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Pre-war_events

But wouldn't the development of weapons require the diversion of nuclear materials? Surely the IAEA are monitoring that very closely. I would have thought that to be one of their primary responsibilities.