U.S. assumptions about key elements of Iran deal unrealistically “rosy”: Critics

“If this experience is any guide, don’t expect the Administration to meet its obligations under the recent Corker-Cardin bill on Iran, which requires the executive branch to provide twice-yearly updates on Iran’s compliance with an agreement,” the Journal writes.

The tardiness of State in reporting violations by other countries of U.S. laws or of treaties and agreements is central to the debate over the Iran nuclear deal. Such reporting is essential because the main argument for the emerging deal is that it would increase Iran’s breakout time – and that this increase would allow the United States and other countries to take steps, including military action, to prevent Iran from building a bomb.

President Barack Obama, for example, in a recent interview with NPR, said that the current breakout time is “about two to three months by our intelligence estimates.” He claimed that by contrast, the pending deal would shrink Iran’s nuclear program, so that if Iran later “decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.”  

Kuperman write that this claim is false, and that the laws of physics and mathematics contradict the administration’s argument.

Breakout time is determined by three main factors: the number and type of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to keep; the level of enrichment of the material it will be allowed to store; and the amount of enriched uranium required for a nuclear weapon.

Kuperman writes that:

• Obama appears to assume that Iran would employ only the 5,060 centrifuges which the deal would allow it to operate for uranium enrichment, not the roughly 14,000 additional centrifuges that Iran would be permitted to keep mainly for spare parts. But to assume that Iran, if it decided to rush for the bomb, would not use these additional centrifuges is not serious. These centrifuges would need to be connected, brought up to speed, and equilibrated with the already operating ones – but this is not too difficult to do. When the centrifuges which the accord allows Iran to keep, but not operate, are added to the centrifuges it is allowed to operate, “Iran’s enrichment capacity could exceed three times what Mr. Obama assumes,” Kuperman writes. This flaw could be addressed by amending the deal to require Iran to destroy or export the additional centrifuges, but Iran has refused to do so.
• Second, the agreement would allow Iran to keep only a small amount of enriched uranium in the gaseous form used in centrifuges, so Obama appears to assumes that a rush for the bomb would start mainly from unenriched uranium, thus lengthening the breakout time. But the deal appears to permit Iran to keep large amounts of enriched uranium in solid form (as opposed to gas), which could be reconverted to gas within weeks, thus giving Iran a considerable head-start to producing weapons-grade uranium.
• Third, Obama’s argument assumes that Iran would require fifty-nine pounds of weapons-grade uranium to make an atomic bomb. “In reality, nuclear weapons can be made from much smaller amounts of uranium (as experts assume North Korea does in its rudimentary arsenal),” writes Kuperman. A 1995 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council concluded that even a “low technical capability” nuclear weapon could produce an explosion with a force approaching that of the Hiroshima bomb — using just twenty-nine pounds of weapons-grade uranium.

Kuperman concludes:

Based on such realistic assumptions, Iran’s breakout time under the pending deal actually would be around three months, while its current breakout time is a little under two months. Thus, the deal would increase the breakout time by just over a month, too little to matter. Mr. Obama’s main argument for the agreement — extending Iran’s breakout time — turns out to be effectively worthless.

Kuperman notes that lifting sanctions would allow for a substantial expansion of Iran’s nuclear program. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said he wants 190,000 centrifuges eventually, or ten times the current number, as would appear to be permissible under the deal after just ten years. “Such enormous enrichment capacity would shrink the breakout time to mere days, so that Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb before we even knew it was trying — thus eliminating any hope of our taking preventive action,” he writes.

If the main argument for the deal with Iran is that it would increase the breakout time Iran would require for a bomb, thus allowing outside powers to take action to prevent Iran from building such a bomb, and this argument is shown to be incorrect, then State’s tardiness in reporting violations becomes even more of a problem.

Even if the pending deal with Iran would increase the breakout time from two months to one year, State’s reporting record would raise questions about the department’s ability to report in time to allow Congress to act. If we accept Kuperman’s argument that all the deal would do would be to increase breakout time from two to three months, worries about Congress receiving timely warning from State about Iran’s violations should only deepen.