“A New Iran Deal Won’t Prevent an Iranian Bomb” is a convincing assessment published by the Foreign Policy organization. A full copy of the report is available online using the link below.
Regardless of whether there is a new deal to limit Iran’s production of nuclear material for a limited amount of time, the world is going to be in an extremely difficult situation in the next few years. This not only has an impact on Middle East peace, it will have a tremendous impact on world peace as well.
Iran now has two bombs worth of uranium enriched to 60 percent levels—close to weapons grade. And it continues to install and operate advanced centrifuges that can enrich it far more quickly than the first generation of centrifuges. The baseline of the Iranian nuclear program has advanced dramatically beyond where it would have been if Tehran was still observing the limits of the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). From that standpoint, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA created the justification for Iran to press ahead, and clearly, the “maximum pressure” campaign of the Trump years failed from that perspective.
That left U.S. President Joe Biden with a difficult inheritance. But the Biden policy to this point has not been successful either. Since the beginning of 2021 the Iranian nuclear program has been accelerating. It now includes large amounts of stockpiled enriched material that, in the words of International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi, have “no justifiable civilian purpose.” That reality means even if the JCPOA is reconstituted, Iran after 2030 would be in a position to move quickly to a bomb unless Iranian leaders come to believe that the cost of doing so is too high.
See the full report online here.
Iran Deal Won’t Prevent a Bomb
Author
Dennis Ross, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy