By the sounds of the rhetoric going back and forth in the media, you’d think the Iranian Nuclear Deal we’re trying to put in place is a horrible loss for the United States, and that we’re being taken for a ride by the wily Ayatollahs.

Or that previous deals with Iran hadn’t ever worked.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Last year, the five members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, called the P5+1 Group, reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program while a larger deal could be brokered. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal and all four have occurred:

• no enrichment of U above 5% U-235, and all highly-enriched materials, some as high as 20% U-235, must be blended down to less than 5% or altered to a non-usable form.

• no additional centrifuges to be installed or produced, and three-fourths of the centrifuges at Fordow and half of the centrifuges at Natanz made inoperable,

• stop all work on the heavy-water reactor at Arak, provide design details on the reactor (which could be used to produce Pu for the other type of atomic weapon) and do not develop the reprocessing facilities needed to separate the Pu from the fuel,

• full access by IAEA inspectors to all nuclear facilities, including daily visitation to Natanz and Fordow, and camera surveillance of key sites.

So now Iran has no highly enriched uranium that can be made into a weapon, work on Arak has ceased, no more centrifuges have been built, and nuclear inspectors have good access to all facilities (Bloomberg).

What more could anyone want?

Ahh… the complete destruction of their nuclear program, even the civilian power part? Or maybe regime change? Or maybe the destruction of the whole country? Or their total conversion to Christianity?

Come on, what is this nonsense? I understand the best nuclear physicists elected to Congress have their own ideas, but this deal is an excellent path towards preventing Iran from getting the bomb.

Of course, the deal we worked out under President Bush was a lot better, but Congress sabotaged that one for the same pie-in-the-sky desire to crush Iran that is undermining this one.

The heart of any acceptable deal is the so-called “break-out time” or “latency period”. This is the time it would take for a country to make a nuclear weapon after the time it seriously decides to. Iran has never seriously decided to make an actual weapon. Their latency period has been a year or less for a decade.

They’ve always wanted the capability to make weapons if conditions warranted, like any country who’s surrounded by other states that already have nuclear weapons, in Iran’s case, Israel, Pakistan and Russia.

Presently, their latency period is a few months, pretty short, since they have over 10,000 specialize centrifuges able to enrich U to the 90% or so of U-235 needed to make a reliable weapon.

The purpose of any agreement is to make sure this latency period remains at least a year. It’s hard to make this time period much longer than a year without actually bombing them and killing all their nuclear scientists.

But having divested themselves of highly enriched U is a huge step backwards for Iran with respect to the bomb, significantly increasing this latency period. Reducing the number of operating centrifuges is another huge step backwards. As is granting unfettered inspection.

In fact, the best indication that they are making a bomb will come when they stop allowing inspections. There is no way to fool our inspectors, which is why everyone hiding something just stops them from entering.

By the sounds of the rhetoric going back and forth in the media, you’d think the Iranian Nuclear Deal we’re trying to put in place is a horrible loss for the United States, and that we’re being taken for a ride by the wily Ayatollahs.

Or that previous deals with Iran hadn’t ever worked.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Last year, the five members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, called the P5+1 Group, reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program while a larger deal could be brokered. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal and all four have occurred:

• no enrichment of U above 5% U-235, and all highly-enriched materials, some as high as 20% U-235, must be blended down to less than 5% or altered to a non-usable form.

• no additional centrifuges to be installed or produced, and three-fourths of the centrifuges at Fordow and half of the centrifuges at Natanz made inoperable,

• stop all work on the heavy-water reactor at Arak, provide design details on the reactor (which could be used to produce Pu for the other type of atomic weapon) and do not develop the reprocessing facilities needed to separate the Pu from the fuel,

• full access by IAEA inspectors to all nuclear facilities, including daily visitation to Natanz and Fordow, and camera surveillance of key sites.

So now Iran has no highly enriched uranium that can be made into a weapon, work on Arak has ceased, no more centrifuges have been built, and nuclear inspectors have good access to all facilities (Bloomberg).

What more could anyone want?

Ahh… the complete destruction of their nuclear program, even the civilian power part? Or maybe regime change? Or maybe the destruction of the whole country? Or their total conversion to Christianity?

Come on, what is this nonsense? I understand the best nuclear physicists elected to Congress have their own ideas, but this deal is an excellent path towards preventing Iran from getting the bomb.

Of course, the deal we worked out under President Bush was a lot better, but Congress sabotaged that one for the same pie-in-the-sky desire to crush Iran that is undermining this one.

The heart of any acceptable deal is the so-called “break-out time” or “latency period”. This is the time it would take for a country to make a nuclear weapon after the time it seriously decides to. Iran has never seriously decided to make an actual weapon. Their latency period has been a year or less for a decade.

They’ve always wanted the capability to make weapons if conditions warranted, like any country who’s surrounded by other states that already have nuclear weapons, in Iran’s case, Israel, Pakistan and Russia.

Presently, their latency period is a few months, pretty short, since they have over 10,000 specialize centrifuges able to enrich U to the 90% or so of U-235 needed to make a reliable weapon.

The purpose of any agreement is to make sure this latency period remains at least a year. It’s hard to make this time period much longer than a year without actually bombing them and killing all their nuclear scientists.

But having divested themselves of highly enriched U is a huge step backwards for Iran with respect to the bomb, significantly increasing this latency period. Reducing the number of operating centrifuges is another huge step backwards. As is granting unfettered inspection.

In fact, the best indication that they are making a bomb will come when they stop allowing inspections. There is no way to fool our inspectors, which is why everyone hiding something just stops them from entering.

By the sounds of the rhetoric going back and forth in the media, you’d think the Iranian Nuclear Deal we’re trying to put in place is a horrible loss for the United States, and that we’re being taken for a ride by the wily Ayatollahs.

Or that previous deals with Iran hadn’t ever worked.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Last year, the five members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, called the P5+1 Group, reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program while a larger deal could be brokered. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal and all four have occurred:

• no enrichment of U above 5% U-235, and all highly-enriched materials, some as high as 20% U-235, must be blended down to less than 5% or altered to a non-usable form.

• no additional centrifuges to be installed or produced, and three-fourths of the centrifuges at Fordow and half of the centrifuges at Natanz made inoperable,

• stop all work on the heavy-water reactor at Arak, provide design details on the reactor (which could be used to produce Pu for the other type of atomic weapon) and do not develop the reprocessing facilities needed to separate the Pu from the fuel,

• full access by IAEA inspectors to all nuclear facilities, including daily visitation to Natanz and Fordow, and camera surveillance of key sites.

So now Iran has no highly enriched uranium that can be made into a weapon, work on Arak has ceased, no more centrifuges have been built, and nuclear inspectors have good access to all facilities (Bloomberg).

What more could anyone want?

Ahh… the complete destruction of their nuclear program, even the civilian power part? Or maybe regime change? Or maybe the destruction of the whole country? Or their total conversion to Christianity?

Come on, what is this nonsense? I understand the best nuclear physicists elected to Congress have their own ideas, but this deal is an excellent path towards preventing Iran from getting the bomb.

Of course, the deal we worked out under President Bush was a lot better, but Congress sabotaged that one for the same pie-in-the-sky desire to crush Iran that is undermining this one.

The heart of any acceptable deal is the so-called “break-out time” or “latency period”. This is the time it would take for a country to make a nuclear weapon after the time it seriously decides to. Iran has never seriously decided to make an actual weapon. Their latency period has been a year or less for a decade.

They’ve always wanted the capability to make weapons if conditions warranted, like any country who’s surrounded by other states that already have nuclear weapons, in Iran’s case, Israel, Pakistan and Russia.

Presently, their latency period is a few months, pretty short, since they have over 10,000 specialize centrifuges able to enrich U to the 90% or so of U-235 needed to make a reliable weapon.

The purpose of any agreement is to make sure this latency period remains at least a year. It’s hard to make this time period much longer than a year without actually bombing them and killing all their nuclear scientists.

But having divested themselves of highly enriched U is a huge step backwards for Iran with respect to the bomb, significantly increasing this latency period. Reducing the number of operating centrifuges is another huge step backwards. As is granting unfettered inspection.

In fact, the best indication that they are making a bomb will come when they stop allowing inspections. There is no way to fool our inspectors, which is why everyone hiding something just stops them from entering.vvv