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5. The Iran Nuclear Deal: Worth Renewing?

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5. The Iran Nuclear Deal: Worth Renewing?

Alan Dowty
Feb 20, 2021
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5. The Iran Nuclear Deal: Worth Renewing?

alandowty.substack.com

Joe Biden wants to return to the nuclear agreement between Iran and the six major world powers. Would restoration of the nuclear deal be good for the United States -- and also for Israel, despite the opposition of its government?

Yes. The agreement does not cover other conflicts, and key provisions are for limited time periods. But the United States and Israel -- and everyone else including Iran's Arab neighbors -- are better off with the deal than without it. Consider the following basic facts:

1. There are two feasible paths to nuclear weapons: uranium enriched to the 90% level with the U-235 isotope, and plutonium. Both involve massive facilities that cannot be successfully hidden from modern technological surveillance. We know this because the Iranians tried and failed -- twice.

2. The key to preventing a nation from developing nuclear weapons lies, therefore, in blocking access to 90%-enriched uranium or plutonium.

3. Since Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), all of its facilities capable of producing enriched uranium or plutonium are supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

4. Iran had produced enough uranium enriched to 3.67% to make several bombs, if this material had been further enriched to 90%. It had also produced some 20%-enriched uranium. Under the agreement, the latter was entirely removed and the former was reduced by 97%, under IAEA supervision.

5. An Iranian nuclear reactor under construction, which would have produced plutonium as a byproduct, was redesigned so that it will not produce any weapons-grade material, under IAEA supervision.

6. Iran had agreed to the IAEA Additional Protocol, which subjects its nuclear sites to constant and tighter inspection and permits challenge inspections of undeclared sites. But because the United States left the agreement, Iran just announced that it will no longer permit such inspection.

7. When specific limits of the agreement expire (in 10, 15, or 20 years), Iran is to be treated like any other non nuclear-weapons state in the NPT. In other words, production of enriched uranium or plutonium must still be justified by non-military needs, IAEA inspection would still be in place, and sanctions could still be reinstituted if other nations concluded that the intent was to develop weapons.

8. The only concession made by the six powers negotiating with Iran was to end sanctions related to the nuclear issue. Sanctions related to other issues remain in effect.

9. Sanctions on nuclear issues were effective in forcing Iran to the table because they enjoyed almost-universal support. Other issues such as Iran's ballistic missiles or its support of terrorism were not on the agenda, though the U.S. and other nations can sanction Iran on these questions.

10. Since the United States left the treaty, Iran has openly produced more enriched uranium than permitted by it. Under the limits of the agreement, Iran's break-out time -- the time required to produce a critical mass of enriched uranium if it were to break out of the agreement completely -- was about one year. With Iran's deviation from the agreement, this break-out time is now estimated at three-four months.

Clearly this has not improved U.S. or Israeli security. If the agreement is not restored, the likely alternative is not a better deal. The most likely alternative is war.

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5. The Iran Nuclear Deal: Worth Renewing?

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Alan Dowty
Mar 14, 2021Author

The only way that the U.S. got such universal support to force the Iranians to back down on nuclear weapons was by focusing on that alone. There was no such support (Russia, China, etc.) on other issues. Throwing them into the mix would have led to failure on the main goal.

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Robert Lerman
Mar 14, 2021

Hi, Alan,

Glad to see you are active. Although I agree with several of your posts, this one ignores an important tradeoff that critics have highlighted. The JCPOA eliminated most sactions that would end of strengthening Iran economically and thus providing more revenues to pursue the aggressive and often terrorist tactics in the region and elsewher. Certainly, Hezbollah has fewer resources because of the reimposition of sanctions, with several articles citing their difficult in paying salaries of their armed men. With more revenues and fewer sanctions, Iran would be able to do more to build up non-nuclear military weaponry. And the JCPOA ended up removing the UN sanction on missile development (yes, I know they would be ignoring this saction but at least their violation would be clear). Despite all these negatives, I can understand some arguing for the JCPOA, but what I cannot understand is how you can ignore the tradeoffs embedded in the policy.

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