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A New Iran Deal Won't Prevent an Iranian Bomb

(Foreign Policy) Dennis Ross - Iran now has two bombs worth of uranium enriched to 60% - close to weapons grade - and continues to install and operate advanced centrifuges that can enrich it far more quickly. Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says this enriched uranium and Iran's production of uranium metal have "no justifiable civilian purpose." Iran has now developed nuclear know-how, so it is already a threshold nuclear weapons state. And Iran will have zero breakout time when the JCPOA's limits on its nuclear program lapse at the end of 2030. A resurrected JCPOA essentially buys time until then. It would defer the Iranian nuclear threat, not end it. Israel - which believes a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat to the Jewish state - will become far more likely to launch major military strikes against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure if it sees the U.S. and others are ready to live with an Iran with nukes. Similarly, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has declared that if Iran has a nuclear weapons capability, the kingdom will get one as well. Will Egypt and Turkey be far behind? If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, the odds are high it will produce a nuclear-armed Middle East - and the risk of a nuclear war in a conflict-ridden region will grow. It is still not too late to prevent Iran from translating its threshold capability into a weapon. But it requires that Iranian leaders believe they really are risking their entire nuclear infrastructure if they keep moving toward a bomb. Today, they do not believe Washington will ever use force against them. The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2022-09-12 00:00:00
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