
President Obama is hailing a weekend accord that he says has "halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program," and we devoutly wish this were true. The reality is that the agreement in Geneva with five Western nations takes Iran a giant step closer to becoming a de facto nuclear power.
Start
with the fact that this "interim" accord fails to meet the terms of
several United Nations resolutions, which specify no sanctions relief
until Iran suspends all uranium enrichment. Under this deal Iran gets
sanctions relief, but it does not have to give up its centrifuges that
enrich uranium, does not have to stop enriching, does not have to
transfer control of its enrichment stockpiles, and does not have to shut
down its plutonium reactor at Arak.
Mr. Obama's weekend statement glossed over
these canyon-sized holes. He said Iran "cannot install or start up new
centrifuges," but it already has about 10,000 operational centrifuges
that it can continue to spin for at least another six months. Why does
Tehran need so many centrifuges if not to make a bomb at the time it
pleases?
The President also said that
"Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment and
neutralizing part of its stockpiles." He is referring to an Iranian
pledge to oxidize its 20% enriched uranium stockpile. But this too is
less than reassuring because the process can be reversed and Iran
retains a capability to enrich to 5%, which used to be a threshold we
didn't accept because it can easily be reconverted to 20%.
Mr.
Obama said "Iran will halt work at its plutonium reactor," but Iran has
only promised not to fuel the reactor even as it can continue other
work at the site. That is far from dismantling what is nothing more than
a bomb factory. North Korea made similar promises in a similar deal with Condoleezza Rice during the final Bush years, but it quickly returned to bomb-making.
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