The Folly of Reentering the Iran Nuclear Deal

On Monday, the regime in Iran announced that it's intentionally violating the 2015 nuclear deal. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidates have reversed their pledges to reenter the accord if elected. In other words, several Democratic candidates would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons by returning to a nuclear agreement that Iran is no longer following. If that strategy sounds illogical, that's because it is.

But that isn't the worst of it. Recall that, under the deal, the most important restrictions on Iran's nuclear program begin to disappear at the end of the next presidential term and the beginning of the following one. So, assuming for a moment that a Democrat is elected president in 2020, the tool by which that president would constrain Tehran's nuclear ambitions—the deal—would effectively expire as they are set to start a second term, or as their predecessor is set to take office, in either case putting the United States in an impotent position to stop an Iranian capability to develop nuclear weapons. And yet, too many Democrats are hell-bent on preserving a nuclear deal that is on its deathbed. At this point, arguments for reviving the narrow nuclear deal in roughly its original form are dangerous and delusional.

The nuclear deal, which President Trump withdrew from last year, allowed Iran to store 300 kilograms of uranium. Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Monday that his country exceeded that limit. The International Atomic Energy Agency has since confirmed this violation. The deal also allowed Tehran to enrich its stored uranium to a low concentration of 3.67 percent, a cap the regime also plans to breach in the coming days. "Our next step will be enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent allowed under the deal," Zarif said.

Despite what the media have reported this week, Iran's latest actions are hardly its first in violation of the nuclear accord. Indeed, Tehran has repeatedly exceeded the limits of heavy water, which is used in nuclear reactors to help produce plutonium, permitted under the deal. The regime has also operated more advanced nuclear centrifuges than are permitted by the accord, while refusing to grant international inspections of nuclear research and military facilities. Furthermore, German intelligence agencies have flagged Iran's continued illicit attempts to buy nuclear and missile technology. As I explained in January, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iranian media that the regime

circumvented a section of the deal that explicitly requires Tehran to remove the reactor core at its Arak nuclear facility in central Iran, and then to fill its tubes with cement so the facility cannot be used to pursue a plutonium path to a bomb. Iran's nuclear chief explained that Tehran secretly acquired and stored replacement tubes, noting that only Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knew about the decision. … [Salehi] added that images showing the reactor core filled with cement were "photoshopped."Iranian president Hassan Rouhani warned Wednesday that the regime "will restore the Arak reactor to its previous condition."
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