In an analysis written after the announcement of a nuclear agreement with Iran, Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, expressed concern that even under the best circumstances, the deal will leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state. After pointing out several weaknesses in the deal, which allows Iran to retain a significant enrichment capacity, frees up billions in funds for Tehran to further destabilize the Middle East, and lifts restrictions imposed on its arms and missile industries, Haass wrote:
A bigger problem has received much less attention: the risk of what will happen if Iran does comply with the agreement. Even without violating the accord, Iran can position itself to break out of nuclear constraints when the agreement’s critical provisions expire. At that point, there will be little to hold it back except the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a voluntary agreement that does not include penalties for non-compliance.
In order to deal with the possibility that Iran could use the cover of the agreement to prepare for a breakout following the expiration of the deal, Haass suggested ways that the United States and its allies could strengthen their position.
It is important that the United States (ideally, joined by other countries) let Iran know that any action to put itself in a position to field nuclear weapons after 15 years, though not explicitly precluded by the accord, will not be tolerated. Harsh sanctions should be reintroduced at the first sign that Iran is preparing a post-JCPOA breakout; this, too, is not precluded by the accord.
Iran should likewise be informed that the US and its allies would undertake a preventive military strike if it appeared to be attempting to present the world with a fait accompli. The world erred in allowing North Korea to pass the nuclear-weapons threshold; it should not make the same mistake again.
The nuclear agreement signed Tuesday morning in Vienna limits Iran’s nuclear stockpile for fifteen years and the number of centrifuges it can keep running for ten. It does not, however, call for Iran to dismantle any of its nuclear infrastructure and in fact calls for the P5+1 nations to assist Tehran in developing next generation uranium centrifuges.
The President admitted in April that these centrifuges would reduce Iran’s ‘breakout time’ – how long it would take to build a nuclear weapon if they so decided – “almost down to zero” in the latter years of an agreement. Tzvi Kahn, a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative, warned the ‘sunset clause’ will allow Iran to ramp up its nuclear development in the final years of the agreement and then achieve nuclear breakout capacity. Before the deal was signed, experts called (.pdf) it a “get out of jail free card” or a “carte blanche” for Iran “to walk, not sneak into nuclear club.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed similar concerns in his speech to congress in March.
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