The IAEA was all over Iran's nuclear production facilities for a decade. The CIA has been all over them as well. There really wasn't nearly as much impenetrab

The IAEA was all over Iran's nuclear production facilities for a decade. The CIA has been all over them as well. There really wasn't nearly as much impenetrable mystery as you imagine. For a very long time, Iran was completely cooperative with the IAEA to an absurd degree. Even the big CIA report said they were building power plants, not bombs, and they saw no evidence any bomb project existed. (Of course they hedged that for political reasons by sticking a 'absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and they might have a super duper extra secret lab 500 miles underground' on the end which was reported in the media as 'secret Iran nuke project confirmed') It wasn't until that point that Iran realized the US really didn't care whether they were building a bomb or not, and it didn't matter how much they cooperated, they were going to be targetted regardless. Hell, at one point they offered to give up their entire nuclear program and all their facilities to the IAEA if the IAEA would run a power plant for them, and the west even turned that down.