The Iranian regime aspires to hold the world hostage under the threat of nuclear conflict while continuing nearly forty years of repression of the Iranian people.  The 2009 Iranian revolution resulted in terrible suffering for many of the protesters, including dozens killed and thousands of arrests.  Major protests again rock Iran, and Iran has responded by blocking social media and cracking down on protesters through killings and arrests.

The U.S. must offer Iran an ultimatum: respect peaceful protests, stop the social media blackout, and open all Iranian military sites to international inspection or face biting sanctions.

The world is giving Iran a free pass from sanctions on account of Iran's purported commitments to the Iran nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or

 JCPOA).  The JCPOA repeatedly notes Iran's "voluntary commitments" – which clearly indicate that Iran is not bound by supposed requirements listed in the JCPOA.  And while, this past November, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claimed that Iran is complying with the JCPOA, asserting that "the IAEA has so far had access to all the locations it needed to visit in the country," this contradicts Ayatollah Khamenei's statement of June 24, 2015 that "no inspection of military sites can ever be done."  After the agreement, he declared that the JCPOA would not limit Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons.  And the Iranian parliament never adopted the JCPOA, meaning that the Iranian nuclear deal is a total charade, with the international community acting as if it were binding when it never has been.

Unsurprisingly, Khamenei's requirement of "no inspection of military sites" has remained unchanged.  In late August 2017, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley urged the IAEA to seek access to Iranian military bases for nuclear-related inspections.  In response, Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht stated that "Iran's military sites are off limits," noting that "all information about these sites [is] classified.  Iran will never allow such visits."

Shortly thereafter, on August 27, 2017, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), top military adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, said that "in the Islamic Republic of Iran, no official, foreign or Iranian, nor even other unrelated members of the armed forces, can inspect our military centers except with the permission of the [c]ommander in [c]hief."  The "commander in chief" is Ayatollah Khamenei.

In fact, an October 2017 report released by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) states with a high degree of certainty that four new military sites "involved in various aspects of the nuclear weapons program" along with two headquarters are operating in Iran free of inspection.  These six sites operate in flagrant violation of the expectations laid down in the JCPOA.

According to Alireza Jafarzadeh of the NCRI, in an article posted on Townhall.com:

Tehran has two nuclear programs – one civilian and the other military.  The military program has been and remains at the heart of Iran's nuclear activities.  Officials of the IRGC help to bridge the two programs.

Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi Davani embodies this role.  A member of the IRGC at its inception, he received a Ph.D. in nuclear science and is also an expert in laser technology, which he used to help the advancement of the laser refinement process.  After playing an active role in the creation of the weaponization headquarters and achieving the rank of general within the IRGC, Abbasi was for years the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the civilian sector.

The civilian sector of the nuclear program has systematically provided a plausible logistical cover for the military sector and acts as a conduit for it.  The results of the research and advancements of the civilian program have been directed to the military.

Iran has used multiple military-related nuclear sites to develop various areas of the nuclear program.  These sites include Pazhouheshkadeh, the Nouri Industrial site, the Haft-Tir site, and the Sanjarian site.  Each of these locations and their operations are either controlled by, directed by, or work in close association with the military Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (Sazman-e Pazhouheshhaye Novin-e Defa'i), known by its Persian acronym SPND.  The sites focus on the different aspects of nuclear weapons that facilitate their use, such as transport, detonation, and warhead design.

Iran is free to keep military sites off-limits to inspection and is not even bound by the nuclear deal altogether.  In exchange for the charade of appearing to agree to the nuclear deal, the Obama administration granted Iran access to $150 billion.  To make matters worse, Iran plans to begin receive new Boeing aircraft this April that would undoubtedly be used to arm and support Iran's terror proxies in the region.

Iran has a history of using commercial aircraft to transport weaponry.  According to a 2011 press release from the U.S. Treasury Department, "rockets or missiles have been transported via Iran Air passenger aircraft" and have "been used to transport missile or rocket components to Syria."  The new jets would enable Iran to triple its commercial air fleet from approximately 250 to 750 aircraft, enabling it to more quickly arm Hezb'allah with advanced weaponry that could be used against U.S. forces in the region and against U.S. allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It is clear that the Iranian nuclear deal is a farce and that the U.S. must decertify it.  The threat to U.S. national security and international security from inaction to combat Iran's active nuclear weapons program cannot be overstated.  The threat the despotic Iranian regime poses to its own innocent civilians constitutes a grievous and inexcusable evil that must be stopped.

Where the League of Nations failed in its mission to prevent WWII and where the United Nations has failed to stop Iran's nuclear program with illusory assurances of peace courtesy of a failed Iranian nuclear deal, it is up to the U.S. and President Trump to make America and the world safe again by decertifying the Iran nuclear deal and by sanctioning Iran.  President Trump has demonstrated that moral clarity and leadership reside in the White House.  Such leadership is sorely needed for long-term international security.