🇮🇷 The Iran Mess
💣 The US sought to halt Iran’s nuclear program, weaken its economy, and isolate it. But Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning—and now the US has brought itself to the edge of the cliff.
In case you missed it yesterday …
By Vivek Kelkar
Yesterday in Jerusalem, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a statement affirming their “commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” adding that the United States “is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.” The pledge was deliberately emotive to convey resolve.
Negotiations with Iran in Vienna earlier this month were inconclusive. The Americans were adamant that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would remain on the US terrorism list. Iran objected and walked away from the table.
When asked yesterday by Israel’s Channel 12 if he was still committed to keeping the IRGC on the terror list, even if it killed any possibility of a deal with Iran, Biden said tersely, “Yes”.
But Iran is the closest it has ever been to building a nuclear weapon. On May 8, 2018, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally abrogated a deal with Iran that had been painstakingly negotiated by the five permanent members of the UN Security and Germany. Since then, Iran has done everything it can to build its nuclear capability very, very quickly. Immediately after Trump’s withdrawal, Tehran began furiously enriching and stockpiling uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency said this month that Iran is now weeks away from having enough to make a single nuclear bomb. Before Trump, the best estimates held that Iran was a year, at least, from enriching this much uranium. Fashioning it into a usable weapon might take another two years, but a number of rogue states have perfected their delivery systems and would probably be happy to sell them to Tehran off the shelf. …
I'm surprised this didn't generate more heat in the comments. Many of Trump's supporters are vocal champions of his posture towards Iran.
I feel like this topic and Bob Zubrin's piece on nuclear energy somehow need to be tied together because while I do think everyone agrees anti nuclear energy sentiment is strongest on the political left in my experience you don't have to dig too deeply on the right to find people deeply ambivalent about nuclear energy on non proliferation grounds.
Actually there is was a good opinion piece released in the New Republic a few days back that basically made the argument from the personal perspective from the author that really almost all opposition to nuclear energy is underneath really about "the bomb" and especially pronounced among older people who lived through the Cold War.
https://newrepublic.com/article/167045/climate-nuclear-power-safety