As he gathered top Jewish leaders to the diplomatic reception room of the White House, President Obama pulled out all the stops to sell his Iran nuclear deal.

The United States, he assured his audience, won't rely on trust in Iran in selling this deal to Congress and to the American public at large.  Instead, Obama insisted, verification will prevent any cheating by the ayatollahs.

Or, in his words: "We don't trust Iran.  This deal doesn't rely on trust; it relies on verification and our capacity to catch them when they cheat and to respond vigorously when they do."

Comforting words?  Yes.  Trustworthy words?  No.

What the president and Jewish leaders failed to bring up is that verification already has bitten the dust because of a series of concessions during negotiations among world powers led by the U.S. and Iranian leaders.

Here's how Iran managed to gut verification in shaping the nuclear deal.

Iranian negotiators successfully vetoed reliance on use of U.S. inspectors.  Check.

Iranian negotiators successfully vetoed snap inspections.  They insisted instead on a 21-day wait between a request to check out suspect sites and actual inspectors allowed on the scene.  Check.

Iranian negotiators  vetoed inspections of any kind by anyone at Iranian military installations.  No foreigners will be allowed a peek.  Military sites are off-base to inspectors.  Period.  This insistence was proclaimed loud and clear by the top of Iran's leadership – from the supreme leader on down.  Check.

This latter concession – to prevent  intrusion by inspectors of any kind – delivered the coup de grâce to meaningful verification.  Iranian behavior already has made it clear that in any choice between military and non-military sites, Tehran will rely on military sites to maintain total secrecy of any and all of its nuclear machinations.  To keep inspection out of the way, all Iran will need to do is to append a "military" label on any suspect site.

Which leaves Obama's reliance on verification in tatters.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers.