Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this month that “we should under no circumstances relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.” Yet under the Iran nuclear agreement announced last week and endorsed Monday by the U.N. Security Council, sanctions on conventional arms are to be lifted in five years and missile sanctions in eight years (possibly sooner under certain conditions). And Iran appears to be making no promises to limit its activities in either area.

The Obama administration has said that the negotiations aimed only to limit Iran’s nuclear activities and that sanctions targeting Iran’s missile program and arms trafficking were essentially punishments for non-compliance over nuclear issues. It has also said that the terms of U.N. resolutions obligate the international community to lift the arms and missile sanctions once a deal is reached on Iran’s nuclear program. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that the extension of arms and missile sanctions for five or eight years was “thrown in as an add-on,” as though they should be considered a win for U.S. negotiators. But these arguments don’t hold up.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737 states two purposes in its preamble: “to persuade Iran to comply…with the requirements of the IAEA” and “to constrain Iran’s development of sensitive technologies in support of its nuclear and missile programmes.” In reports on Iran’s noncompliance with its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, the International Atomic Energy Agency has included concerns related to missiles, such as Iran’s “studies…related to the design of a missile re-entry vehicle.”

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.