Obama’s Nuclear Giveaway, Continued

In an NRO article published yesterday on the CSP site I explained why Congress must renounce the nuclear negotiations with Iran because they are likely to result in a weak, short-duration agreement that will do nothing to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and could lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

I mentioned in my article that Iran cheated on an interim nuclear deal signed last November by installing advanced centrifuges.  This delayed the start of talks on a final agreement.  How was this blatant violation resolved? A compromise was agreed to under which Iran could develop and install more advanced centrifuges but could not go beyond designs being researched as of January 2014. This was a significant concession by the West because it meant that although Iran agreed to a cap on the number of operating centrifuges, it was allowed to replace older, primitive models with new designs that will be far more reliable and four or more times more efficient. Similar language likely will be in a final agreement.

Just after the interim agreement was finalized in January, Iran announced it was developing its most advanced centrifuge design to date, the IR-8, which Iranian officials claim will be 16 times more efficient. Tehran’s testing of this new centrifuge design over the last few months appeared to violate the spirit but not the letter of the interim agreement since it only conducted mechanical tests but did not inject IR-8 prototypes with uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas.

These latest examples of Iranian cheating and bad faith are more reasons why the nuclear talks have become a farce and why Congress must renounce them.