Iran nuclear deal in hands of Trump

For several years, we’ve heard a great deal about the Iran nuclear deal, formally named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran signed the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968. Its nuclear facilities have been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1974. As an NPT signatory, Iran is permitted to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel as long as no material is used for weapons.

Here are some of the Iran nuclear deal’s major points. Iran will turn off two-thirds of its centrifuges and will stop work on advanced centrifuges. This extends significantly the time to enrich uranium to weaponsgrade. Iran will repurpose the Arak reactor to research radiopharmaceutical production.

Arak has not gone critical; it could produce weapons-grade plutonium. Arak is almost identical to Israel’s Dimona reactor that was built by France to produce weapons-grade plutonium. At its present power, Dimona can produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to make 15 bombs annually with a yield like Fat Man that was dropped on Nagasaki. Israel has more than 400 nuclear weapons of all types. It can deliver them with submarines, missiles and planes anywhere, including the U.S. and Europe.

Iran will reduce its quantity of 20 percent enriched uranium and will ratify the Additional Protocol that allows the International Atomic Energy Agency to apply stronger safeguards. As a signatory of the NPT, Iran has pledged not to develop nuclear weapons; the treaty allows the peaceful development and use of nuclear energy.

Iran has complied fully with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA inspects all known Iranian facilities, including Natanz and Fordo. The latter is deep inside a mountain to protect it from bombing. Iran’s Osirak research reactor was destroyed by Israel’s air force in Operation Opera, June 7, 1981. It also destroyed an incomplete Syrian reactor in Operation Orchard, Sept. 6, 2007.

Israel neither confirms nor denies its nuclear weapons. It’s one of only three states that have not signed the NPT. The others are India and Pakistan; all three have significant nuclear arsenals.

The president and congressional Republicans now threaten to kill the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. President Donald Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have little knowledge of the Iran nuclear deal, nuclear materials and the production of nuclear weapons. This opposition is based on political motives and ignorance of important aspects of the agreement, nuclear science and engineering.

This information comes from open-source books and internet articles. I’m a physicist; my field is nuclear safeguards, nonproliferation and arms control. In 38 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the European Atomic Energy Community, the Department of Energy and the International Atomic Energy Agency, I worked for and with the Safeguards Department of the IAEA. I set up and managed a program that has been part of the initial training of all IAEA safeguards inspectors since 1979. I’ve devoted my life to nonproliferation and disarmament; this issue is very important to me.

Dr. T. Douglas Reilly lives in Los Alamos.