Despite President Obama’s triumphal assertions regarding progress in reduction of Iran’s nuclear research program, the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) reached between Iran and the P5+1 negotiating team in late 2013 is clearly a sham. For more than a decade, Iran diffused Western opposition to its nuclear capability through a strategy of deceptions, stalls and illusory concessions learned from North Korea’s success in the same game. When the JPA expires in June without measurable benefit, the United States must finally confront the reality that Iran will not peaceably give up its nuclear ambitions.

History of Iran’s Nuclear Program

Western efforts to bring an end to Iran’s nuclear development, and Iran’s defeat of those efforts, are well documented. Iran’s nuclear program nominally dates to the 1960s, when the U.S. supplied the Shah with the Tehran research reactor, and 1970s, when work began on the Bushehr light-water reactor. That Bushehr project proceeded…