Amid growing indications that Iran does not plan to comply with the July nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), there is a new report that the huge U.S. concessions offered to Tehran to get this agreement are already undermining global efforts against nuclear proliferation.
One of the most significant of these concessions allows Iran to continue to enrich uranium even while the JCPOA is in effect. This contradicts years of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on Iran to halt all uranium enrichment, and previous U.S. policies that have strongly discouraged nations from beginning peaceful uranium-enrichment programs due to the ease with which they can be used to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel.
Although Obama-administration officials deny it, this concession has been interpreted by Iran and other nations as conceding to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium. Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review in August that this denial is hard to take seriously, since John Kerry conceded Iran’s right to enrich in 2009, when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The chickens have already come home to roost on the uranium-enrichment concession: The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which in 2009 signed an agreement with the U.S. barring it from pursuing uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, is now considering renouncing these commitments.