Thursday, July 30, 2015

No, the Iran Deal Doesn’t Let Them Develop a Nuclear Weapon

Max Fisher at Vox has been doing an excellent job of debunking all of the arguments being used against the nuclear deal with Iran. To hear conservatives tell it, the deal actually gives Iran nuclear weapons, which could hardly be further from the reality.

Myth #1: The Iran deal is abject surrender and will make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear bomb

This is probably the most common talking point about the Iran deal, and certainly the most common one against it: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making it for months, as have some Republicans.

This is total nonsense and is, in fact, the exact opposite of what is happening. Iran has accepted enormous cuts to its nuclear program, not to mention invasive and politically humiliating inspections…

It’s worth looking at what actual arms control experts say: that the deal is very good at limiting Iran’s nuclear program and is favorable to the United States. Given that many of those analysts were initially pessimistic, that they took this as a welcome surprise tells you something.

One nuclear weapons expert, Aaron Stein, told us the that deal “makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote.”

Perhaps the most important provision is that they have to get rid of 70% of their centrifuges and can only keep those that cannot enrich uranium or plutonium very highly. That, along with a limit of 3.67% on enrichment, which is good only for peaceful generation of nuclear power but not for a bomb (weapons-grade requires enrichment to 90%), makes it nearly impossible for them to create a nuclear weapon.

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