politics to go: jeff dunetz

Iran’s new breakout time: only 5 months

Posted

The Institute for Science and International Security last week published a report revealing yet another part of the P5+1 deal that’s been kept secret from Congress and the American people.

The Iranians, we’ve now learned, were given a secret side deal — in addition to the one that was revealed in July — reducing Iran’s bomb-building breakout time to less than 5 months (the Obama administration had promised the deal would expand the breakout time to a year).

The administration claims it informed Congress of key Joint Commission decisions on implementation day, but in a confidential manner. However, Reuters reported that New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, a vocal critic of the Iran deal and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told it that “I was not aware nor did I receive any briefing” on the side deal.

The institute’s report outlined three areas where the rogue regime was given secret exemptions and one area where Iran was allowed to exploit a loophole. The description of the exemptions is very technical, but they all lead to the same thing: Iran will have purer nuclear fuel and more of it.

The report also said “the Joint Commission also agreed to allow Iran to keep operating 19 radiation containment chambers larger than the accord set. These so-called ‘hot cells’ are used for handling radioactive material but can be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts.” Plutonium, like Uranium is a nuclear weapons fuel; the explosive power of a bomb using either fuel is about the same. However, a Plutonium bomb is more dangerous because of the radiation fallout — Plutonium emits alpha radiation, a highly ionizing form of radiation (it releases more radioactive particles), rather than the beta or gamma radiation released by a Uranium bomb. 

As described by the institute, “The deal allowed Iran to meet a 130-tonne limit on heavy water produced at its Arak facility by selling its excess stock on the open market. But with no buyer available, the joint commission helped Tehran meet the sanctions relief deadline by allowing it to send 50 tonnes of the material — which can be used in nuclear weapons production — to Oman, where it was stored under Iranian control, the report said.”

The institute also confirmed that the U.S. and its partners are right now considering whether to make past exemptions permanent, and create new ones (otherwise Iran will again end up violating the deal by missing deadlines). In other words, rather than enforcing the deal the U.S. is capitulating again, this time by allowing Iran to “push the goal posts forward.

Six weeks ago the Associated Press discovered a different secret deal which eased the restriction on the more advanced centrifuges which enrich the nuclear fuel more quickly, in this case twice as fast. It is estimated that the use of advanced centrifuges reduce Iran’s breakout time to build a bomb from one year down to six months during the first decade of the agreement, and down to four months beginning in year 13. This latest revelation, permitting Iran to keep a greater amount of purer nuclear fuel shortens the break out period even further, because they have a head start in the enriching process.

These latest concessions make the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran virtually worthless.

According to the Administration, before the P5+1 deal Iran’s breakout time to build a bomb was about three months. They claim the deal as originally described extended the breakout time to a year.  

The secret deal described by last month’s AP centrifuge scoop cut the breakout time from one year down to six months (during the first decade of the deal). The latest revelation by the institute shortens it even further.

Let’s look at a best case scenario. What if the latest secret deal only shortened the breakout time by only one month? It means the time needed for Iran to breakout and build a nuclear weapon is down to about five months total. 

Remember before the P5+1 agreement, the president claimed the breakout time was three months. Therefore, based on the new information our impotent president negotiated a deal that lengthened Iran’s breakout time to build a bomb by two months — only 60 days — from three to five months.

Before the P5+1 deal the Iranian economy was on the verge of collapse because of the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N.  Thanks to the release of the frozen cash and the easing of sanctions, the Iranian despots were able to begin propping up their economy and go back to providing cash and weapons to their terrorist buddies.

And there is one of the other result of the deal. Thanks the weakness and concessions displayed by President Obama and his two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, the terrorist supporting regime of Iran and many of other enemies of America look at the United States as a paper tiger. That’s why we’ve faced incidents such as when Iran captured our boat and sailors in January 2015.

Now that these secret concessions have been made public, I wonder if members of Congress who sold their souls (and the safety of American, Israeli, and Saudi Arabian children) to their party regret their decision

These concessions should not be a major surprise. From his first day in office, Barack Obama has lied about every major program he tried to shove down the throats of American voters. Beginning with the “shovel ready” projects of the stimulus which turned out to be reward for the Democrats’ political buddies, or his false claim about cutting spending (he did cut spending but only after he doubled spending) to telling Americans that Obamacare would allow then to keep their insurance if they liked it, all the way through to the Iran deal, Obama has lied about the structure of his programs. He has put our collective futures and those of our children and grandchildren in grave danger.

Contact Jeff Dunetz: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com