There
is Zero Chance of Permanent Accord With Iran
No
permanent agreement with Iran over its nuclear program will be
possible if Tehran continues to insist it will not dismantle a single
centrifuge, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
Netanyahu’s comments, made at the opening of the weekly cabinet
meeting, came less than a week after the interim agreement with Iran
to halt some elements of its nuclear program went into effect.
“If
Iran stands by that statement, that means that a permanent agreement
– which is the goal of the entire diplomatic process with Iran –
cannot succeed,” Netanyahu said.
“Iran
is basically insisting on preserving its ability to get fissile
material for a bomb without in any way extending the time-line to a
nuclear break-out.” This means, he said, that much of what Israel
has been warning about in objecting loudly to the interim agreement
was already coming true.
In
a CNN interview Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declaring to CNN
host Fareed Zakaria that Iran “will not accept any limitations”
on its “nuclear technology” in the context of a comprehensive
agreement between Tehran and the West, and that the Iranians will
“not under any circumstances” agree to destroy any uranium
enrichment centrifuges.
Zakaria
described Rouhani’s statement as a diplomatic “train wreck,”
observing that “the Iranian conception of what the deal is going to
look like and the American conception now look like they are miles
apart.”
The
preview of Rouhani’s statements came a day after CNN aired footage
of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asserting in an
interview that Iran is not obligated to dismantle centrifuges, and
that White House statements to the contrary – and there have been
several such statements - were mischaracterizations.
A
report published this week by the U.S.-based Institute of Science and
International Security (ISIS) had outlined the minimum requirements
that Iran would be obligated to take under any agreement that
robustly imposed limits on Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear
weapons.
The
Wall Street Journal pointedly observed that the report’s
prescriptions “aren’t viewed as particularly harsh or hard-line,”
and ISIS head David Albright emphasized that they had been produced
after ‘extensive discussions in recent months with Obama
administration officials working on the Iran file.’
The
ISIS reported calculated that any agreement would have to require the
Iranians to dismantle 15,000 centrifuges, and that some of the
dismantled equipment should actually “be taken out of Iran.”
Source: The
Tower
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