FDD’s Rich Goldberg has sought to publicize President Biden’s secret, illicit deal with Iran giving the regime everything it wants. Among other venues, Goldberg wrote about it in this September 12 New York Post column. I flagged Goldberg’s column in “The $6 billion misunderstanding, cont’d.”

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon now writes for Semafor. Solomon’s 2016 book The Iran Wars remains a valuable contribution to understanding the war Iran is waging. Confirming Goldberg’s point about the existence of a secret deal, Solomon reports today:

The International Atomic Energy Agency told member states in a confidential report that Iran is now producing uranium enriched to 60% purity at a rate of 9 kg per month, up from 3 kg over the summer and early fall. The U.S. estimates that Tehran already has amassed enough fissile material for the production of three nuclear weapons and is moving dangerously close to the 90% purity that’s considered weapons grade.

Tehran has “increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023,” the IAEA said in the report, which was first viewed by the Associated Press and Reuters.

Iran scaled back its production of 60%-enriched uranium following a back-channel agreement reached last spring between the Biden administration and Iran, Middle East officials told Semafor. In return for this reduction, the U.S. greenlighted the release of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian energy revenues held in Asian and Mideast banks. This sequenced deal also included a September prisoner-swap agreement that resulted in five American citizens being released from Iranian detention.

I urge interested readers to check out Solomon’s Semafor story here.