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A "Good Deal" Needs to Bolt the Door on the Iranians Getting a Nuclear Weapon

(Ynet News) Ronen Bergman interviews Gen. David Petraeus - "To accept that Iran's nuclear ambitions over the years have been exclusively peaceful would require a willing suspension of disbelief....The International Atomic Energy Agency has extensively documented the so-called 'possible military dimensions' of the Iranian program, which clearly indicate that - at least until a few years ago - the Iranians were conducting activities whose only rational explanation is that they wanted a nuclear weapons capability." "History suggests, however, that countries that get to that [nuclear] threshold do not stay there. And regardless, based on everything we know and see about the Iranian government, we cannot allow them to be on the brink of having a nuclear weapon." "To my mind, a 'good deal' needs to bolt the door on the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon. In this respect, certainly large swaths of the program need to be dismantled or at least altered. I don't know that this requires an end to enrichment, but certainly it would seem to me that there need to be substantial limitations on how much enriched material Iran can possess and the percentage to which they can enrich, as well as restrictions on the research, development, and deployment of new, more sophisticated models of centrifuges." "An extremely robust inspections program is also necessary - going beyond the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact, the inspections regime is, in my mind, the most critical component of a deal." Gen. (ret.) David Petraeus served as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, and head of the CIA.
2015-03-10 00:00:00
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