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Accommodating Iran and Risking Israel's Future
(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - Never would Iran be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. That was the pledge of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Flash forward to the Obama administration. "Never" has been slimmed down to 13 years - at best. The Iranians have secured enough nuclear fuel to make the first generation bomb small enough to be dropped from a transport plane. On almost every key issue, the Iranians won the day as the Obama administration folded. The entire infrastructure of the Iranian nuclear weapons program remains intact. What would an acceptable deal look like? We need an end to all R&D activity on advanced centrifuges; a significant decrease in the number of operational centrifuges; the closing of the Fordow facility; an agreement to ship Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country; a commitment to accept intense international inspections; a willingness to limit enrichment of uranium at its Natanz facility to a level needed only for civilian purposes; to cut back installed centrifuges by about two-thirds; as well as modifying its Arak heavy-water reactor to render it incapable of producing plutonium for a bomb.