The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified once again that Iran is complying with its obligations in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA):

The UN atomic agency chief on Monday affirmed Iran’s commitment to a 2015 nuclear deal, in a statement that came as US President Donald Trump said Tehran was not living up to the “spirit” of the agreement.

“I can state that the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the (nuclear agreement) are being implemented,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said in prepared remarks during a conference in Rome.

The IAEA announcement is the latest confirmation that the nuclear deal is working exactly as intended and advertised. Contrary to the predictions of opponents of the deal, Iran has honored the terms of the agreement from the beginning, and so far shows every sign of continuing to do so. IAEA inspections in Iran are now among the most extensive and thorough for any country in the world. Those inspections would not have been possible without the deal, and they would come to an end if the Trump administration and its allies in Congress succeed in sabotaging the agreement. The nuclear deal remains one of the great success stories of recent U.S. diplomacy, and it represents a tremendous advance for the causes of nonproliferation and international security. If Trump refuses to certify the deal later this month as he is expected to do, he will be spitting on one of the biggest diplomatic wins that the U.S. had on the world stage in decades.

Opponents of the deal once claimed they were certain that Iran couldn’t be trusted to keep its end of the bargain, but even before the agreement was concluded most of the deal’s opponents have been demanding that the U.S. renege on its commitments. Iran is complying and proving them to be completely wrong on this point, but they remain committed to wrecking the deal one way or another and now insist that compliance is insufficient or irrelevant. Now they invoke the “spirit” of the deal because they cannot fault Iran for violating the letter, and when that bit of misdirection no longer gets them anywhere they will conjure up some other bogus reason for wanting to blow up a successful nonproliferation agreement.

The reason for this chicanery is that their opposition to the deal is based in hostility to diplomatic engagement generally and with Iran in particular, so there is nothing that the deal or Iran could do that would ever satisfy them. If one phony objection to the deal doesn’t get them what they want, they will cook up another and then another. Opponents of the deal want to scuttle it because they perceive it as an obstacle for a much more aggressive policy towards Iran, and they would rather risk having an Iran with the capability to build nuclear weapons that they can more easily vilify than settle for an Iran with a peaceful nuclear program that the world can do business with. It is fair to say that the deal’s opponents hate it as much as they do because it has been a complete success and has deprived them of a pretext for the next war.