Diplomacy

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Nuclear Experts: Emerging Deal Could Allow Iran Breakout Time of Less Than a Year

by TheTower.org Staff |

Iran’s breakout time under the emerging nuclear deal could be less than the Obama administration’s estimate of one year, according to Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas in Austin. Writing in The New York Times yesterday, Kuperman argued that under the framework reached in Lausanne, the actual breakout time – the time needed to accrue enough enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon – could be as little as three months.

Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has similarly stated that under the emerging deal Iran’s breakout time would be less than a year, arguing in part that the United States may have underestimated the capacity of Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges. Additionally, since Iran is allowed to continue centrifuge R&D during the deal, which will allow it to develop more advanced centrifuges that can enrich uranium more efficiently, breakout times in later years would “shrink drastically.” The Obama administration has consistently argued that the deal will push back the breakout time from a current 2-3 months to one year.

Kuperman indicated that allowing Iran to keep 14,000 excess centrifuges in the country rather than destroying or exporting them is problematic as the centrifuges could be deployed to enrich uranium in the future. David Albright, a leading non-proliferation expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, similarly warned, “The centrifuges in excess of a limit should ideally be destroyed. Otherwise, Iran could re-install them, building back to its original enrichment capacity…This restoration of capacity would lead to very short breakout times, far less than a year.”

In a report last month, Albright wrote (.pdf) that more than half of Iran’s near 20% low enriched uranium (LEU) stockpile will be in the form of scrap, which “Iran would be expected to seek to recover much of…for conversion into usable uranium oxide.” The stockpile is also in fuel form, from which LEU could also be extracted “in significantly less than one year.” Extracting LEU from these forms could significantly reduce Iran’s breakout time.

[Photo: Newsloop Top News / YouTube ]

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