Iran Is in Position for a Surprise Nuclear Breakout

No wonder it’s in no rush to renegotiate a nuclear deal.

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“Our nuclear program is advancing as planned and time is on our side,” an unnamed Iranian official bluntly told Reuters on May 5.  “Oil sales have doubled,” noted Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last Monday. In short, since the election of Joe Biden, Tehran has not only made impressive strides toward a nuclear weapons capability but repaired much of the financial damage done by U.S. sanctions. 

It’s plain to see the clerical regime is in no rush to negotiate a revised nuclear deal. What’s the hurry when both oil exports and enriched uranium stockpiles are surging? But the risk here is not just that Tehran keeps stalling. It is that protracted negotiations may provide cover for a nuclear breakout—that is, the production of enough weapons-grade uranium for one or more bombs.

How Biden Let It Happen

The Biden administration has a standard response when reporters ask why Iran is enriching uranium to higher and higher levels or deploying more advanced centrifuges: It’s all Donald Trump’s fault. Tehran’s provocations are just an ongoing response to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

A bit of history shows this is a hollow excuse. Before Biden won the 2020 election, the clerical regime made cautious and incremental moves on the nuclear front. Sensing Biden’s avid interest in restoring the JCPOA, the regime in Tehran began to test him. Would he stay at the table and keep relaxing sanctions enforcement even as the clerical regime ramped up its nuclear program? He would.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Alain

    Let me get this straight, Iran has had a nuclear program for 20 years and it's Bidens fault? FDD is privy to all types of Iran nuclear secrets and our intelligence community is clueless? Iran sat by and tweedled their thumbs while Trump was president?

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    Ben Connelly

    I hope Iran never gets fear nukes but fear they will soon.

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  3. Joe1776

    Thank you for this article. Clearly many people do not realize the impact of a break out. Israel would know that they will be the target and likely have to take preemptive action themselves. I agree 100% with you Biden needs to develop a position and one that very clearly says they will not tolerate a nuclear Iran or an Iran that does not cooperate with inspectors.

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    Todd T

    We just have to get past this idea that Iran having a nuke is a bridge too far. It’s going to happen short of war. And maybe we should go to war to protect Israel. But for gods sake, North Korea has them and that guys is bonkers. And Putin has them and is actively attacking other countries. Iran is going to have one soon and we can’t do anything about it unless we want to start a war.

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    1. Mathew A

      Then go to war and stop it.

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  5. Daniel Rabiner

    This article is pretty amazing. UN Sanctions aren't going to be reinstituted while we support Ukraine against Russia. If Russia can sell oil under current sanctions, Iran can too and Iran signed a trade pact with China after Trump left JCPOA for oil so that ship sailed.

    It's a lot harder to get someone to agree to a settlement on nuclear weapons when your country already 1. entered into an agreement with them, and 2. ripped it up the moment a new administration took over.

    I don't get how you can blame Biden for this when all of these conditions (besides the Russia/Ukraine war) occurred under Trump. Sanctions only works when Russia and China were on board, and now they aren't.

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    1. Mathew A

      " 1. entered into an agreement with them, and 2. ripped it up the moment a new administration took over."

      except there never was a real agreement. Treaties require the approval of the senate.

      But the senate wouldn't approve, because the agreement guaranteed Iran the bomb eventually

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    2. Jaybrown

      I blame Obama for striking such a lousy "deal" that he knew it could not be ratified as a treaty and so didn't even try.

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        Paul Reichardt

        Why did it need to be a treaty? That position just always struck me as a bad-faith talking point.

        The terms of the Iran deal just involve the removal of sanctions which are enforced by the US Justice and Treasury departments—both part of the executive branch.

        Traditionally treaties are ratified by Congress to end a state of war that Congress had previously declared or to making binding commitments to provide a budget for some outlays specified in the terms of the deal/treaty, as it was in the case of Clinton’s ill-fated non-ratified Agreed Framework with North Korea that stalled because Congress refused to fund it.

        None of that’s not the case here.

        The Trump Administration certified that Iran was in compliance with the JCPOA based on its own intelligence agency assessments, then turned around and tore it up without cause. The Trump Administration also walked out of at least three Senate-Ratified treaties with no Congressional input. Even treaties have exit clauses and they are only binding in proportion to the good-faith on the part of the occupant in the White House in executing the terms.

        Any future GOP administration will do the same to any deal, ratified or not—many in the party have pledged to do exactly that.
        So why should a Democratic administration bother with spending the political capital to get 60 votes in the Senate when you, I, and everyone else knows exactly what’s going to happen as soon as the next Republican comes into office? It’s a farce. I understand why politicians participate in that game, but not why opinionated internet schmoes like you or I should do so.

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        1. Jaybrown

          Treaties are legally binding on the US, executive agreements are not. If a Democratic president obtains ratification of a treaty, the next Republican president cannot cancel or withdraw from it except under the provisions of the treaty itself.

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          1. Mathew A

            "Treaties are legally binding on the US, executive agreements are not"

            this

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          2. Daniel Rabiner

            Scraping the deal with nothing, as Trump did, is the issue. The original deal, while not perfect was better than nothing as we are seeing now. Sanctions alone can't solve all our issues and particular when it requires the cooperation of other major powers to make them effective.

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  6. Avatar photo
    JAB

    So, I'll admit I am by no means an expert on either the Middle East, the Iranian regime or nuclear proliferation, but I find some of the criticisms to be a little confusing. To me it seemed (and I could be wrong, let me know if I am) that JCPOA was keeping the Iranian program at least in a holding pattern, not rolling back their progress toward the bomb, but keeping it at an arms length (a good thing) but also economically helping the regime (a bad thing).

    When Trump withdrew from the deal and reinstated sanctions it had the effect of hurting the regime economically (a good thing) but offering no reason for them to not start working on nukes again (a bad thing).

    Now, with the world economic situation being what it is and oil prices being what they are (something that the Biden administration only has a very small amount of control over) the Iranians are going to be both making money and making nukes. Now I think lengths that the Biden administration has been going to to restart the agreement are embarrassing, weird and a bit weak, but it seems to me that they were dealt a bad hand both by the Trump administration and world events.

    To tell you the truth, I don't have an idea about what a good solution would be. If we imposed even heavier sanctions and completely ended the flow of oil out of Iran wouldn't it just raise oil prices further and make inflation even worse? I can't see a politician of any stripe wanting to do that right about now. We can start dropping the bombs, true, but that sees like that might carry a whole bag of unintended consequences as well. Plus, what if it ends up being unsuccessful and they still get the bomb?

    There may be ideas that I am not thinking of (I certainly hope so), let me know if I am missing something.

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    1. Mathew A

      "that JCPOA was keeping the Iranian program at least in a holding pattern"

      nope it wasn't. The JCPOA basically guaranteed that Iran would get a bomb due to the way it was phased out. Also it didn't give inspectors the free range needed to ensure Iran wasn't working on a bomb.

      For the JCPOA to be worth the paper it was printed on, it would have needed to be in effect in perpetuity, and allowed inspectors access to any facility at any time.

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      Todd T

      I think you offer a good assessment. And there are no good options. We are either going to bomb Iran (or allow Israel to do so) or live with the fact that they will have nuclear weapons. There just isn’t any other way around that.

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      Rjosephpaquette

      Let's not forget, Obama's unwillingness to put JCPOA up as a treaty allowed any subsequent president to simply withdraw. Full force and consent of the senate would have made more sense. To this day, I don't know why Obama didn't at least put it to an up or down vote.

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      rlritt

      I agree. There doesn't seem to be anyway of hurting Iran without hurting us. Its hard to reason with a regime based on strict religious principals that sees comprise as going against God's will.

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    5. dan

      This accurately summarizes the situation for me. I think it was a bad idea to end the deal (in spite of whatever tom cotton says). And I'd be surprised if they didn't have enough fissile material already for multiple warheads (at least 1).

      (they've been using better and better centrifuges --- e.g.: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/10/iran-testing-advanced-nuclear-centrifuge-that-would-allow-faster-uranium-enrichment.html); and that article was from 2021..

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    Logical

    This is incoherent. JCPOA was the result of the said massive sanctions against Iran. Obama was called weak!

    Trump broke the pact.

    Now, the author wants to restart the massive sanctions?

    Excuse me; everybody else just moved on. Ship sailed? Horse out of the barn? Train left the station? Pick your favorite.

    May be, just may be, US is not the center of the universe at all times.

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      Paul Reichardt

      According to the WaPo article linked in this piece:
      “Iran’s president said Monday the country is exporting twice as much oil as when he took office in August, despite heavy sanctions on oil exports imposed by the U.S.”

      Whether or not that boast is true, it happened despite heavy sanctions not due to them being ended.

      There were multilateral sanctions passed by the Obama administration, including alignment with China and Russia and the UNSC, that were ended with the signing of the JCPOA.

      Trump imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran after leaving the JCPOA and got western and Asian allies on board only under the threat of arm-twisting. This “Maximum Pressure” campaign of the Trump administration—and underwritten by the FDD—has been showed to have been a failure just as skeptics always warned—you ban McDonalds from selling burgers to a guy, he just goes to the Burger King across the street. But the sanctions are still in place ostensibly as an incentive to keep Iran at the negotiating table.

      Instead of manning up to it and being constructive moving forward , the author’s employer, the FDD, is trying to weasel out of being held responsible for the failed policy results that their organization pushed for.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Logical

        "got western and Asian allies on board only under the threat of arm-twisting"

        Are there still any left who are taking the Trump sanctions seriously?

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      The Bell Tower

      Restart sanctions? Hell, we should bomb the holy hell out of any nuclear capabilities we can reach. Obama was a weak scoundrel, Trump was like a four year old wandering into traffic with a loaded bazooka and Biden is both weak and foolish. America’s performance in this region has been craven and embarrassing ever since the departure of W.

      Iran is a criminal regime and yes, the US is indeed the center of the universe until such time that we forfeit that position. Should that happen, I can assure you that the world will not approve of the replacement.

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        Rjosephpaquette

        Dear Logical and Jason,

        Thanks for focusing the blame on your red and blue team leaders, Trump and Obama respectively. That's exactly what Iran counts on--and continues to inch forward to become a nuclear power. The WORLD, not just the USA has an interest in keeping Iran a non-nuclear weapon power.

        US is not the 'center of the universe'; it's just the 800 pound gorilla and without us, diplomatic efforts are likely to fail. Meanwhile our domestic squabbles continue to distract.

        Ok, you two can return to blaming Trump and Obama while the Supreme Leader of Iran continues to play the USA.

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          The Bell Tower

          You’re welcome!

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          Logical

          No. I am more worried about the author creating noise than the Supreme Leader. We fall from within.

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            Rjosephpaquette

            Nuclear weapons make 'falling from without' a real concern.

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