Steven Erlanger
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump says the agreement he reached with Iran could end the war he started and ensure that the country will never have a nuclear weapon. He claimed that Iran has promised not to develop one, a promise it has made before, including in the nuclear deal reached with the Obama administration that Trump ripped up.
But the details on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme have not been settled. Those issues will be negotiated in the 60 days after two sides are scheduled to sign the agreement on Friday.
The text of the accord has not been released and both sides are spinning their versions of it, making it difficult to know precisely what Iran has promised. For example, Iran has in principle agreed to suspend enriching uranium for some years, but the two sides have yet to agree on how long that will be.
In a telephone interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Trump admitted that a consensus had not been reached. He wants Iran to stop enriching for 20 years; Iran reportedly wants no more than a decade.
The president hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension but was also adamant that Iran would be limited to enriching at low levels that “could never be used by the military.” But he declined to say what that enrichment level would be, and only said that the new accord would assure that “they can only enrich for nonmilitary purposes. Forever.”
Iran has also agreed to give up half of its 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% — near weapons grade — while diluting the other half to levels that would make it only applicable for nonmilitary uses.
It is also unclear what will happen to the rest of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and its sophisticated centrifuges, the machines that spin at supersonic speed to enrich the material.
What is clear is that Iran’s scientific knowledge of the nuclear cycle cannot be eliminated, and that a new, more hard-line Iranian government may believe that it can only deter another attack by working toward a nuclear weapon.