2 Iran deals were signed Tuesday - and the one you haven't heard about could be way more important
That's because another deal signed on the same day - a "road map" between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran - will allow the IAEA to confirm that Iran has responded to all of the agency's concerns regarding Tehran's past nuclear-weaponization efforts.
These disclosures are critical to the success of an agreement, as they allow international monitors to establish a baseline of Iranian nuclear-weapons research, experimentation, and expertise for future inspections.
Without knowledge of the scope and extent of Iran's program, it's difficult for the IAEA to eventually confirm that Iran's nuclear programs are for solely peaceful purposes.
Consequently, the two nuclear deals have a direct relationship: Without Iran and the IAEA following their road map, the inspection and verification mechanisms of the other nuclear deal can't work either.
Here are three areas of potential concern:
Deferring a resolution to the Parchin issue
Iran built "a large explosives containment vessel or chamber at the Parchin military complex in 2000 to conduct high-explosive and hydrodynamic experiments related to the development of nuclear weapons," according to the Institute for Science and International Security, which notes that possible high-explosive bunkers were detected at the site as late as 2004.
But because Parchin is considered a military facility, it has been closed off to IAEA inspectors for a decade.
Parchin is therefore a crucial location in determining the extent of Iran's weapons program.
Will inspectors be allowed in? We don't know yet: The road map simply says "Iran and the IAEA agreed on another separate arrangement regarding the issue of Parchin."
A very tight deadline
Iran and the IAEA want to square away all disclosures by December 15, when the agency's director general "will provide, for action by the board of governors, the final assessment on the resolution of all past and present outstanding issues, as set out in the annex of the 2011 director general's report."
That's pretty ambitious, seeing as Iran has been nonresponsive to IAEA queries on past weaponization work since November 2011. The IAEA thinks it can work out its disclosure issues with Iran in five months - after being unable to work out those same issues over the previous four years.
But that's not the only problem. Five months may not be enough time for Iran to make these kinds of disclosures and for the IAEA to verify them. By comparison, it took the IAEA several years to confirm the dismantling of South Africa's nuclear-weapons program, while the agency didn't totally certify that South Africa's program was entirely peaceful until 2010.
For Thomas Moore, a former nuclear proliferation expert for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this quick timeline suggests the sides just want to sweep the disclosure issue out of the way so the rest of the deal can progress.
That's backward, in his view: The deal should actually be contingent on these disclosures, he says, and regarded as a condition of implementation rather than a short-term obstacle.
"What I would have done is said OK, you want to have advanced centrifuges and be an enrichment country and to fabricate fuel, but that this commission, which the agreement sets up, won't even consider that until the IAEA - during whatever period of time it requires - decides that it has resolved all of its concerns," Moore told Business Insider.
"In other words, we're going to put this military program that you claimed you never had in front of the deal, and not in front of the deal for a few months, but for however long it takes."
It's unclear what happens if Iran doesn't cooperate
What if the IAEA and Iran can't reach an agreement on disclosure before December 15? What if the IAEA secretary general's statement determines that the agency isn't satisfied with Iran's answers to its questions about weaponization?
The road map doesn't say. At one extreme, the lack of disclosure by December 15 is a poison pill for the entire process, proof of Iranian bad faith that stops a potentially historic agreement in its tracks.
At the other extreme, the deal's implementation will progress even in spite of Iranian intransigence. We'll know within a matter of months.