The Associated Press has learned that Iran has been lying about its past interest in manufacturing nuclear weapons.

Conservative writer for The Washington Post Jennifer Rubin called the revelation, "another sign we've been had" by the nuclear deal the Obama administration struck with Iran. She pointed to the AP report, released while American attention was diverted to the terrorist attack in California, that explains how Iran has "consistently denied" any involvement in planning or in the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. However, according to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place [up to 2009]."

"In other words," Rubin writes, "we know definitively that Iran lied about its prior efforts to build a nuclear weapon."

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) saw the same report and released the following statement:

The IAEA report proves Iran lied.  For years, the Iranian regime worked secretly to develop a nuclear weapon.  And there are still important questions that remain unanswered.  For example, how far did Iran get toward building a bomb? And what happened to all of the materials, research, and expertise Iran acquired?

Iran’s long track record of obstructing investigators means the IAEA will face significant challenges moving forward – especially since the president’s nuclear agreement allows Iran to carry out self-inspections at key sites.  Iran won’t even have to cheat to achieve advanced enrichment capacity, which puts them just a small step away from a bomb.

But of course the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqhchi, maintains that the UN agency's report "confirms the peaceful nature" of his country's nuclear program. And surely this kind of "honesty" will be the order of the day when Iran conducts its own unsupervised inspections.