According to Georgetown University’s Ariane Tabatabai, the JCPOA represents “the most intru­sive inspections regime ever voluntarily agreed to by any party.” Currently, there are routine, sometimes daily, inspections of 18 declared facilities, plus another nine locations outside facilities (LOFs), as well as a number of other sites not under safeguard that Iran has allowed the IAEA to inspect. In other words, the access that the IAEA has inside Iran and the transparency on Iran’s nuclear program under the JCPOA, is unprecedented.

Why would Ambassador Haley make this trip to Vienna to encourage the IAEA to demand access to Iran’s military sites? As she told Reutersyesterday, the motive had to do with past assessments that Iran had engaged in illicit nuclear development at undeclared military sites prior to 2003. “If you look … at past Iranian behavior, what you’ve seen is there have been covert actions at military sites, at universities, things like that,” Haley explained. Thus, she wanted to press the IAEA with questions like: “Are you looking at everything? Are you looking at those places where there has been covert activity in the past? Are you able to get access to these areas? Or are you being delayed? Are you being shut out from those things?”

The JCPOA clearly outlines a process for inspections at undeclared military sites. If there is evidence of suspicious activity at an undeclared site, the IAEA is to present the evidence to Iran and request clarification. If clarification is deemed unsatisfactory by the IAEA or the deal’s signatories, a voting mechanism will take place that can force Iran to “implement the necessary means” for inspections within three days.

There is no publicly available evidence that Iran is engaging in any illicit activities at undeclared military sites, and no public official of any JCPOA signatory country or of any international agency has made such a claim. But Haley’s visit fuels suspicion anyways. When Iranian officials balked at the notion of inspecting sensitive military sites in the absence of evidence of any breach, Haley responded: “Why would they say that if they had nothing to hide? Why wouldn’t they let the IAEA go there?”

It is the Trump administration’s prerogative to meet with the IAEA regarding inspections and monitoring inside Iran, but it is easy to see this effort as disingenuous, given the president’s stated opposition to the JCPOA. President Trump is required every 90 days to formally certify, based on IAEA reports and assessments from the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA. He has done this twice so far, though in July he vowed that he would not do so a third time and that he was willing to defy the recommendations of his top Cabinet officials, such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, to affirm Iranian compliance.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump declared his “number‐​one priority [would be] to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Aside from the fact that the deal has been successful in staving off Iranian nuclear weapons capability for the foreseeable future, one major reason his advisors have walked him back on that campaign promise is because it would isolate the United States on the international stage. None of the other signatories to the JCPOA, including especially our European allies, will play along with a deliberate and unwarranted abrogation of the deal by the Trump administration, meaning re‐​imposing international sanctions would be a non‐​starter, even if all of the unprecedented transparency into Iran’s program is lost thanks to Trump’s anticipated nullification of the deal.

That might explain why the Trump administration is pursuing the route taken by Ambassador Haley yesterday. As the Associated Press reported last month: