Do you wonder what world leaders know that we don’t? Shall we start with the Iranian nuclear deal?

From the White House website January 2016:

On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.

Before this agreement, Iran’s breakout time — or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough fissile material to build a weapon — was only two to three months. Today, because of the Iran deal, it would take Iran 12 months or more. And with the unprecedented monitoring and access this deal puts in place, if Iran tries, we will know and sanctions will snap back into place.

Here’s how we got to this point. Since October, Iran has:

• Shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of the country
• Dismantled and removed two-thirds of its centrifuges
• Removed the calandria from its heavy water reactor and filled it with concrete
• Provided unprecedented access to its nuclear facilities and supply chain

Because Iran has completed these steps, the U.S. and international community can begin the next phase under the JCPOA, which means the U.S. will begin lifting its nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. However, a number of U.S. sanctions authorities and designations will continue to remain in place. More here.

Sept, 2015: Democratic senators Tuesday blocked for the second time an attempt by frustrated Republicans to stop the Iran nuclear agreement from taking effect. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed to try again to derail the deal.

Senators voted 56-42 in favor of bringing to the floor a resolution of disapproval opposing the Iran deal — four votes shy of the 60 Republican leaders need to advance the resolution. It was the second time in less than a week that Democrats safeguarded the Iran agreement. The votes spare President Obama from having to veto a disapproval resolution since it will not come to his desk. The House rejected the vote, so what did the Obama White House do? They took it to the UN and bypassed Congress completely…Now we know more details as it is demonstrated that Obama, John Kerry and Ben Rhodes all lied. Consequence? None yet unless we demand them.

TWS: Iran was given secret exemptions allowing the country to exceed restrictions set out by the landmark nuclear deal inked last year, some of which were made public this week by the United Nations nuclear watchdog and others that are likely still being withheld, according to diplomatic sources and a top nuclear expert who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday posted documents revealing that Iran had been given exemptions in January that permit the country to stockpile uranium in excess of the 300 kilogram limit set by the nuclear deal, experts said. The agreements had been kept secret for almost a year, but recent reports indicated that the Trump administration intended to make them public.

TWS reported earlier in December that top Democratic senators also supported releasing the documents.

Some details of the exemptions had previously been leaked. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) revealed in September that Iran had been allowed to exceed certain caps in the deal so that the country could come into compliance with the deal’s terms.

Administration officials dismissed the ISIS report at the time, and surrogates who White House officials have described as the administration’s “echo chamber” criticized the organization.

“The administration was really nasty after we released these documents,” David Albright, the founder and president of ISIS, told TWS on Friday. “It was very tough for us to get the information. … I think that if we hadn’t released, they had every intention to keep it secret. They may have given lip service to openness, but I think their intention was to keep it secret.”

Albright credited the release of the documents as a step towards greater transparency, despite administration attempts to conceal the agreements.

“You just have to ask the question of, what else is being hidden?” said Albright. “The administration did it to try to minimize the chance that people would know what was in these decisions, and certainly keep those people from talking to people like me in the technical community that can actually interpret what’s in those decisions.”

A source who works with Congress on the Iran issue and who had been briefed on some of the exemptions confirmed that assessment.

“The Obama team was just hoping to get through the next few weeks without revealing that they’ve been allowing Iran to go beyond the nuclear deal the whole time,” said the source. “That way the president and Secretary of State Kerry could keep declaring that Iran has been following the deal, and their echo chamber could keep saying the nuclear deal is working.”

“But now it’s public. The only reason that the nuclear deal is still in place is because the Obama team has been secretly rewriting to let Iran cheat. The only question is, what’s still not being told?”

The now-confirmed exemptions reported on by ISIS include allowing Iran to keep low-enriched uranium (LEU) in various forms beyond what’s allowed under the nuclear deal. The concession applies to forms that have been “deemed unrecoverable” for use in a nuclear weapon, and Iran has promised not to build a facility to try recover them.

That language is not in the nuclear deal, and Obama officials have struggled to defend it. At a State Department press briefing in September after the release of the ISIS report, journalists pressed spokesperson John Kirby on the decision.

“You’re using this term that’s not in the document. I’m just trying to figure out how we can actually check that or understand what it means,” said Associated Press reporter Bradley Klapper. “If you say some things are usable but some things aren’t, but I don’t know which are which, that’s not spelled out in the document. That seems to be a new idea here.”

Albright suggested to TWS that the uranium could actually be recoverable and used in a rush to a nuclear weapon. The State Department in September distorted the nature of the exemption, he said.

“If this whole thing rests on [Iran] promising not to build a facility that they’d probably only build in secret if they were going to actually break out, then this material probably should not be deemed non-recoverable,” he continued. “The State Department … deliberately distorted what was in these decisions to make this point that somehow ‘non-recoverable’ meant [the LEU] really would never be able to be recovered, regardless if they build a facility.”