Call for return to Iran nuclear deal
A GROUP of 40 former government officials and leading non-proliferation experts have urged US President Joe Biden to successfully complete negotiations for a return to the nuclear deal with Iran, warning that Tehran is a week or two away from producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium to fuel a bomb.
Yesterday the experts said failure to reverse the policies of the Donald Trump administration, which withdrew from the agreement between world powers and Iran in 2018, would be “irresponsible” and “would increase the danger that Iran would become a threshold nuclear-weapon state”.
All sides in the negotiations are expressing pessimism that a new agreement can be reached to restart the 2015 deal, under which Iran sharply limited its nuclear programme and submitted to strict international verification in exchange for the lifting of US and international sanctions.
After his withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, Trump reinstated the sanctions and imposed even more, and Iran increased its uranium enrichment far beyond the agreed limits. Biden promised to return to the agreement, and negotiations started last April.
After the past year of talks, in which Iran and the US have negotiated indirectly through the European parties to the deal, the two sides have agreed to a draft text but have been unable to bridge a final gap that has nothing to do with the nuclear agreement itself.
Iran has revived an early demand that the US lift its foreign terrorist designation against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a concession Biden’s advisers say would be politically untenable.
Negotiations have been suspended since last month, while EU officials have tried without success to find a compromise. Efforts have focused on persuading the US to offer a partial lifting of the IRGC designation and
urging Tehran to reciprocate with concessions on areas of US concern outside the nuclear deal, which include Iran’s support for foreign proxy militias and its ballistic missile programme.
Virtually all Republican lawmakers and many Democrats have voiced opposition to any deal with Iran.
The experts’ statement argues that sanctioning Iran opened the way for Iran to accelerate its capacity to produce bomb-grade nuclear material.”
As a result, it said, “it is now estimated that the time it would take Iran to produce a significant quantity (25kg) of bomb-grade uranium … is down from more than a year to approximately one or two weeks today”.