Spy head: US can make Iran stick to deal

U.S. intelligence agents will be able to make sure that Iran sticks to the terms of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal — despite the concerns of some of the agreement’s opponents — according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Or at least they’ll be able to tell if Iran cheats on its end of the deal, the nation’s top spy said. 

“I’m pretty confident in that,” Clapper said at a conference in Washington on Wednesday.

{mosads}“I won’t say 100 percent — you should never say that — but pretty confident that we can in fact verify, through our own sources … what the Iranians are doing,” he added.

The comments are likely to do little to mollify the deal’s opponents — including a seemingly united Republican conference in both chambers of Congress — who worry about the inability to ensure that Iran does not cheat. In part, the opposition is based on so-called secret side deals that appear to allow Iranian inspectors to take the lead in some areas. 

Yet they will surely bolster the arguments of the deal’s backers, who achieved a key victory on Tuesday by marshalling more than enough Senate Democratic votes to stall legislation meant to kill the deal.

Clapper’s assessment, he said, was partially based on an initial analysis that intelligence agencies had submitted to Congress in the days after the nuclear accord was signed earlier this summer.  

In particular, Clapper on Wednesday pointed to some classified “independent capabilities” that ought to give the U.S. deep insight into Iran’s nuclear work.

“That will enable us, I think, to have root insight into the nuclear industrial enterprise in Iran, if I can call it that,” Clapper said.

“Given a choice between a state sponsor of terrorism with nuclear capability and a state sponsor of terrorism without it, I’d probably take the latter.”