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Confront Iran's Nuclear Violations

(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Emily B. Landau - The specific violations of the nuclear deal that Iran has chosen to commit expose dangerous flaws in the JCPOA that were apparent from the start. Iran would not be able to hike up its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU), or enrich to higher levels, if enrichment had not been allowed and even legitimized by the deal. Moreover, Iran was allowed under the deal to work on research and development on a full range of advanced centrifuges, meaning that a decision to operate them was only a short step away. The heavily fortified underground enrichment facility at Fordow, now restarting operations, should not have been allowed to remain open. This facility, which was not declared to the IAEA and had been meant to be kept secret, was revealed in 2009 on the basis of intelligence information. Having been caught red-handed regarding an undeclared facility, demonstrating that Iran was deceiving the IAEA regarding a facility with military applications, it made sense to demand that it be shut down. Not only was Fordow left open, but 1,000 centrifuges were left in the facility. The latest IAEA report on Iran fails to mention anything about its investigation into the Iran nuclear archives - the original Iranian documents detailing its plans for producing five nuclear bombs that Israel extracted from Tehran in January 2018. These documents - which include information about scientists, facilities, and equipment involved in Iran's military nuclear program that were not known in 2015 - were turned over to the IAEA over a year and a half ago. It is preferable to confront Iran's violations now, when it is relatively weak, than in 5-10 years when the deal expired and the country could achieve a quick nuclear breakout. The writer heads the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at INSS.
2019-11-26 00:00:00
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