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Why the Biden Administration Shouldn't Rush into a New Iran Deal

(The Dispatch) Danielle Pletka - A new book by nuclear weapons expert David Albright, Iran's Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons, based on 55,000 pages of documentation from the archive of the Iranian nuclear program smuggled out of Tehran by Israeli agents, should set off further alarm bells for those inside a U.S. government hoping to patch things up with the Islamic Republic. Albright concludes that "in 2003 they had a [nuclear bomb] design that was the diameter of a car tire. It was designed small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles. The bottom line is, they know more about making nuclear weapons than was known before the discovery of the archive, and they could make them quicker than was known before the discovery of the archive." Other critical revelations include the fact that Iran has almost two dozen sites linked to its nuclear weapons program, of which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has visited only three, and that Iran has or is very close to having the ability to load its nuclear payload onto a medium-range ballistic missile that can hit Israel and southern Europe. Finally, the documents shed light on how Iran continued its program well after 2003 and after the signing of the JCPOA, moving from design testing to virtual testing focused on a weapons on-demand program that allows Tehran a nuclear weapons option at a time of its choosing. The bottom line, according to Albright, is that "the archive has revealed a host of undeclared nuclear sites and activities, all previously dedicated to a covert, and illegal, nuclear weapons program." In short, critical research on nuclear weapons and miniaturization have continued since the signing of the JCPOA, yet the Biden administration seeks to return to the deal as if the nuclear archive revelations never happened. What needs to happen is a rethinking of the terms of the JCPOA, before U.S. leverage is lost. The IAEA must be allowed access to all the sites revealed in the nuclear archive, including the many it has never visited, and must be allowed to interview the scientists known to work at those sites. And the question of delivery vehicles must be addressed before Iran is once again relieved of sanctions and given billions in cash. The writer is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
2021-06-07 00:00:00
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