Eli Lake, Columnist

Intel Assesses Iran Deal, Without Really Assessing Iran

Lawmakers say the administration's report doesn't address whether Tehran will comply.

July 31, 2015 at 5:25 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

If President Rouhani isn't re-elected....
Photographer: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

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The intelligence assessment provided to Congress to support the Iran nuclear deal has a hole: It fails to examine the intentions of Iran's regime to actually comply with the agreement over time.

U.S. intelligence officials and members of Congress who have reviewed the document -- known as a classified annex -- tell me it says that compliance can be verified and that U.S. intelligence can reasonably detect a secret attempt to build a bomb.