The Case Against Returning to the Iran Deal in Return for Merely
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Selected articles concerning Israel, published weekly by Suburban Orthodox Toras Chaim’s (Baltimore) Israel Action Committee Edited by Jerry Appelbaum ( [email protected] ) | Founding editor: Sheldon J. Berman Z”L Issue 8 7 1 Volume 2 2 , Number 0 5 Parshias Beshalach J anuary 30 , 20 2 1 The Case against Returning to the Iran Dea l By Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi theatlantic.com January 21, 2021 In return for merely postponing its nuclear program, agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or the agreement rewarded Iran extravagantly. destroy a single centrifuge. The ease and spe ed with which Proponents of the Iran nuclear agreem ent are Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly sounding the alarm. In 2018, the United States withdrew enriched uranium — doing so at a time of its own from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and since choosing — illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with then, Iran has increased the quality and quantity of its these capabilities. In fact, the JCPOA blocks nothing. uranium enrichment well beyond what the deal allows. If the restrictions on Ir an’s nuclear enrichment were Recently, it has even begun enriching uranium to 20 inadequate, they were also designed to be short - lived, percent, a short distance away from weapons - grade. Iran, some sunsetting as early as 2024. Meanwhile, the deal JCPOA advocates say, is closer today to producing a bomb allowed the regime to develop advanced centrifuges than it was in 2015, when the deal was concluded. Only capable of spinning out more highly enriched uranium in the deal’s renewal, they insist, can prevent the nightmare of far less ti me. Less than a decade from now, Iran will be a nuclear Iran. legally able to produce and stockpile enough fissile material “Five years ago, American - led diplomacy produced a for dozens of bombs. The 97 percent reduction of Iran’s deal that ensured it would take Iran at least a year to enriched uranium stockpile achieved by the JCPOA would produce enough fissile material for one bomb,” Joe Biden be swiftly undone. Breakout time woul d no longer be a wrote in September. “Now — because Trump let Iran off year, or even three months, but a matter of weeks. the hook from its obliga tions under the nuclear deal — This isn’t just the assessment of the deal’s opponents, Tehran’s ‘breakout time’ is down to just a few months.” but also that of its principal architect. “If in year 13, 14, 15 More recently, he warned that if Iran gets the bomb, then [after making the deal], they have advanced centrifuges Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt will follow. that can en rich uranium fairly rapidly, the breakout time Why, then, aren’t Israelis and Arabs — those with the would have shrunk almost down to zero,” President most to lose fro m Iranian nuclearization — also demanding Barack Obama acknowledged in an April 2015 interview a return to the JCPOA? Why aren’t they panicking over its with NPR. dissolution? The answer is simple: The JCPOA didn’t Realizing that the JCPOA guaranteed Iran’s future diminish the Iranian nuclear threat; it magnified it. ability to enrich uranium on an industrial sca le, Saudi Iran needs to acquire three components in order to Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey accelerated their search for b ecome a military nuclear power: highly enriched uranium, nuclear options as soon as the deal was signed. The a functional warhead, and a missile capable of delivering it. JCPOA’s opponents never feared that Iran would violate The JCPOA addresses only the first of these efforts in any the deal, but rather, they feared that the regime would keep detail, and even then, offers merely partial and temporary it — waiting out the suns et clauses and emerging with the solutions. The deal largely ignores the second effort, and ability to produce enough uranium for a nuclear arsenal. actually advances the third. The deal, then, allows Iran to eventually possess the The JCPOA did limit Iran’s immediate ability to enrich first component for a bomb: a stockpile of highly enriched enough uranium for a bomb. It reduced the regime’s uranium. Next it needs a warhead. Despite Iran’s uranium stockpile by 97 percent, mothballed two - thirds of insi stence that it has never tried to build a bomb, Western its centrifuges, and re - designated two of its major nuclear intelligence officials have long determined that it did, but facilities as civilian research centers. Uranium enrichment believed that the regime suspended its efforts in 2003. The was capped at 3.7 percent, far short of weapons - grade. weapons program was directed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a These concessions were intended to extend the time Iran nuclear scientist and gen eral in the Islamic Revolutionary needed to enrich enough uranium for a single bom b from Guards Corps, who was assassinated in November. In a approximately three months to a year. Should Iran attempt recording obtained by Israel and shared with the United to break out and go nuclear, advocates explained, the States in 2008, Fakhrizadeh explained that the secret international community would have enough time to efforts in fact continued and that Iran intended to initial ly intervene. The JCPOA, they asserted, blocked all of Iran’s produce five nuclear warheads. paths to a bomb. The possibility that Iran might still be trying to build a But the JCP OA allowed Iran to retain its massive bomb did not, however, preoccupy the framers of the nuclear infrastructure, unnecessary for a civilian energy JCPOA. Of the deal’s 159 pages, only half of one page program but essential for a military nuclear program. The addresses Iranian weaponization, and it contains no Focus o n Israel January 30, 2021 Page 2 manda te for international action. Although there are In return for merely postponing that outcome, the provisions for inspecting enrichment - related facilities, deal rewa rds Iran extravagantly. The JCPOA infused the none exist for inspecting potential bomb - making sites or Iranian economy with tens of billions of dollars in punishing Iran should any be discovered. Instead, there is immediate sanctions relief and trade deals and promised to merely an Iranian declaration that it will not try to make a provide hundreds of billions more. Yet rather than invest bomb — a promise that Iran, which has systematically lied in its decaying infrastructure, the regim e used portions of about its nuclear program for decades, has repeatedly this windfall to expand its international terror network, broken in the past. enhance the offensive capabilities of Hamas and The recklessness of this omission became even more Hezbollah, and further assist the Syrian regime in glaring three years ago, after Israel exposed Ira n’s secret massacring and uprooting its own people. In addition to nuclear archive. Among its many thousands of pages were extending its dominance of Lebanon, Iran has documents detailing undeclared nuclear sites and consolidated its influence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. radioactive materials, as well as blueprints for a missile - Rather than buying Iran’s moderation, the JCPOA helped borne bomb. More damning, the archive confirmed that fund its quest for regional hegemony. Iran’s nuclear - weapons progr am did not stop in 2003 but Exporting terror and instability, massacring and was merely split into overt and covert channels, some of expelling Syrian Sunnis, and tryi ng to kill Israelis — all of them embedded in prestigious universities, and both these Iranian activities were blandly subsumed by the aspects of the program were headed by Fakhrizadeh. The JCPOA’s framers under the term malign activity. The deal goal, he states in the documents, was to maintain “special was intended to serve as a precedent for international activ ities … under the title of Scientific Development” that cooperation in addressing these crimes, but in practice, “leave no identifiable traces.” little has happened. Instead, desperate to preserve the These revelations underlined the fatal flaws of the agreement, signatories have ignored the regime’s JCPOA. The very existence of a secret archive was a aggression. The failure to address this “malign activity” flagrant violation of Iran’s obligation to come clean about reflects a near - total unwillingness to confront Iran and its previous weaponization work. And it was exposed not signals that the regime generally has litt le to fear from by international inspectors, but by Israel’s Mossad. international interference. Advocates of the deal are hard - pressed to explain why Iran The sermons and military processions accompanied by would keep, conceal, and repeatedly relocate designs for a chants of “Death to Israel”; Iran’s supreme leader, Ali nuclear weapon unless it wanted t o preserve the option of Khamenei, calling for the elimination of the Israeli someday making one. “cancer”; even a recent bill proposed in the Irania n With its nuclear infrastructure intact, its work on parliament that would commit the government to advanced centrifuges proceeding, and restrictions on “eliminate” Israel by 2041 — all of these outrages and more enrichment ending with the sunset clauses, Iran’s future are taken for granted by the international community. Yet nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium is ensured. And with no other country today so publicly and repeatedly declares its weaponization - related efforts unimpeded, the regime its intentions to annihilate a f ellow UN member state, needs only a system for delivering a bomb. The regime linking its national purpose to that goal. At the same time, already possesses Shahab - 3 missiles, based on the North Iran has committed enormous resources and paid a Korean No - dong, capable of hitting any country in the staggering economic and diplomatic price to develop the Middle East and even natio ns as far away as Romania.