Iran Negotiations Miss Another Deadline

Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program missed another deadline yesterday, as the two sides continue to have “sharp disagreements.”  The deadline has been extended to July 7.

Negotiators have been clashing over issues like “inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, how quickly the west will roll back sanctions, and what types of research and development Iran will be permitted to conduct on advanced nuclear technology,” Fox News reported.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of Iran’s shameless duplicity regarding its nuclear program. According to Town Hall, in the past few weeks alone:

“Two European intelligence reports spelled out how Iran's nuclear cheating has continued during the negotiations; experts determined that Iran's nuclear stockpile has increased significantly during this period, during which Tehran's program was ostensibly ‘frozen’ with its stockpiles reduced; [and] the State Department once again affirmed Iran's continued status as a major state sponsor of international terrorism, concluding that the regime's malignant activities have carried on ‘undiminished.’”

President Obama has insisted that a deal with Iran would, at the very least, prolong the time it takes Iran to become a nuclear “breakout” state. Yet a nuclear expert wrote in the New York Times last week that even these modest claims are “greatly exaggerated.” He wrote:

[Obama says] the pending deal would shrink Iran’s nuclear program, so that if Iran later “decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.” Unfortunately, that claim is false, as can be demonstrated with basic science and math. By my calculations, Iran’s actual breakout time under the deal would be approximately three months — not over a year. Thus, the deal would be unlikely to improve the world’s ability to react to a sudden effort by Iran to build a bomb. Breakout time is determined by three primary factors: the number and type of centrifuges; the enrichment of the starting material; and the amount of enriched uranium required for a nuclear weapon. Mr. Obama seems to make rosy assumptions about all three.

Failure to stop the Iranian nuclear program would have unthinkable consequences. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed out yesterday, allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons would be no different than allowing allowing ISIS to develop nuclear weapons.

“No one would dream of allowing the Islamic State of ISIS to have nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “Why would anyone consider giving the Islamic State of Iran, which is a lot more powerful than ISIS and acts with much greater power than ISIS, to have additional power of nuclear weapons?”