Iran’s nukesSnapback of Sanctions under the Terms of the Nuclear Deal Is Fully Justified Today

By David Albright

Published 28 May 2020

“If Iran today wants a serious discussion about sanctions relief, it should start by abandoning the key threat Tehran poses to international peace and security: its uranium enrichment program,” writes David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “Instead, Iran holds its own people hostage over the deadly coronavirus outbreak in a cynical campaign for wholesale sanctions relief.” The willingness of Iran’s leadership to refuse epidemic aid and thus dramatically, and unnecessarily, increase the number of sick and dying Iranians; the willing of the leadership to intensify and deepen the severe economic deprivation and misery across the country – and do all that in order to grow an economically nonviable, menacing uranium enrichment program — “That alone should lead all to consider just what is the real purpose of Iran’s enrichment program,” Albright writes.

Here is the statement by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, on Iran sanctions, the coronavirus, and the need to verifiably dismantle Iran’s uranium enrichment program:

Iran’s uranium enrichment program provides, by itself, a major justification for continued U.S. and international sanctions. A snapback of sanctions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is fully justified today.

If Iran today wants a serious discussion about sanctions relief, it should start by abandoning the key threat Tehran poses to international peace and security: its uranium enrichment program. Instead, Iran holds its own people hostage over the deadly coronavirus outbreak in a cynical campaign for wholesale sanctions relief. Pakistan’s leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto famously said, “We will eat grass, even go hungry,” to get an atomic bomb; Iran’s leaders appear similarly willing to sacrifice their own people, to let them die of a virus in unnecessarily high and shocking numbers, to refuse offered medical aid, to suffer immense economic deprivation, to grow an economically nonviable, menacing uranium enrichment program. That alone should lead all to consider just what is the real purpose of Iran’s enrichment program.

Coronavirus Aid Not the Issue
Iran should certainly receive international medical aid and humanitarian assistance to fight the coronavirus, particularly given the immense suffering caused by the coronavirus and the Iranian government’s botched handling of the outbreak. However, because U.S. sanctions allow for such assistance, these sanctions should not be suspended or removed. The sanctions are tied to Iran’s past and present deceit about its nuclear program, its clandestine efforts to develop nuclear weapons, its on-going development of missiles, and its on-going odious, destabilizing behavior in the region.

The United States should make clear that sanctions will continue in their present form absent the verifiable dismantlement of Iran’s centrifuge uranium enrichment program; they will grow as Iran continues to expand its enrichment program beyond that allowed under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran’s enrichment program is in equal measure uneconomic, unnecessary for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, and unusually threatening to regional and international security.