{"id":195,"date":"2014-01-13T16:13:03","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T16:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=195"},"modified":"2014-01-13T16:14:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T16:14:37","slug":"iran-nuclear-talks-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Iran Nuclear Talks – Progress?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The announcement of the new elements coming from the talks with Tehran represents progress of a sort.\u00a0 Basically there is a trade between Iran\u2019s ongoing ability to enrich uranium (and produce plutonium) that could be used in a weapon and unblocking funds (and backing off on some sanctions for Iran).\u00a0 Whether this \u201cwalks back\u201d the Iran program significantly remains debatable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bear in mind, Iran can build a nuclear weapon.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a question of how long it would take.\u00a0<\/strong> Iran clearly has the intellectual capability and, currently, it has the industrial infrastructure to produce the specialized enriched nuclear material for a bomb.\u00a0 They also have the ability to launch a weapon on their existing ballistic missiles.\u00a0 The goal of those seeking to thwart an Iranian nuclear weapon has been to stop their progress towards a weapon and make the lead-time longer.<\/strong>\u00a0 The recent agreement moves in the direction of lengthening the time it would take Tehran to accumulate the enriched nuclear material for a weapon.\u00a0 It also improves the ability of IAEA weapons inspectors to detect cheating or a breakout by Iran.\u00a0 Still we don’t know how long it would take Iran to build a weapon if it decided to.\u00a0 The reason is we don’t know how much work Iran has done to design and test a weapon. They have refused to discuss this despite long efforts by the IAEA to engage them on this critical point.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the vital gap in the ongoing negotiations.\u00a0 Until we know how far Iran has progressed in the design and testing of an actual bomb we have not succeeded.<\/p>\n

A nuclear weapon requires enriched uranium or plutonium, but to make a weapon requires a very sophisticated design to cause compress and \u201cignite\u201d the nuclear core.\u00a0 This requires a lot of testing and very fine fabrication.\u00a0 The international community does not have a good window into this.\u00a0 The IAEA has been seeking access to facilities and individuals (particularly the Parchin facility) where substantial evidence points to Iranian \u201cweaponization\u201d development.<\/p>\n

In essence, we can\u2019t tell how far Iran is from a bomb because they have blocked\u2014and still block\u2014access to this data.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If the international community does not get a clear verifiable understanding of what progress Iran has made in \u201cweaponization,\u201d then sanctions and other measures should be swiftly reinstalled.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From Tehran\u2019s perspective, if they come clean, they risk an international reaction that could block progress in sanctions relief.\u00a0 Particularly if they have done significant weapons design testing.\u00a0 It will be a tricky decision for Iran to make.<\/p>\n

However, unless President Obama or Secretary of State Kerry can at some point stand up and say categorically that Iran has declared their full program, including its \u201cweaponization\u201d development (and describe publicly what it is\/was) then no one should expect sanctions to be lifted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I look forward to seeing a full public briefing of the Iranian nuclear program, to include details of it\u2019s implosion design, triggering mechanism, fusing for use on a ballistic missile, etc. It may be embarrassing to Iran (and potential its supporters who may have assisted it).\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I also look forward to hearing how elaborate a future monitoring regime will be going forward.\u00a0 If Tehran is earnest on these two points, then they should have an on-ramp back to the international political and financial community.\u00a0 If not\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The announcement of the new elements coming from the talks with Tehran represents progress of a sort.\u00a0 Basically there is a trade between Iran\u2019s ongoing ability to enrich uranium (and produce plutonium) that could be used in a weapon and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,71,19,74],"tags":[43,42,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}