It's time for Team Trump to face facts: Iran doesn't want a nuke deal
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Iran’s rulers are proving they have no intention of denuclearizing the easy way, no matter how many carrots Team Trump dangles to get them on board.
On Monday, after five rounds of talks, Iran was set to reject a US proposal that reportedly allowed the country to keep up low-level uranium enrichment for an unspecified amount of time.
No such details of the deal are confirmed, and the White House refuses to comment while talks may continue — but it’s plainly time to quit giving an inch.
It’s bad enough that the administration seemingly backed off on its insistence that any uranium enrichment was a “red line”; forcing Iran to get rid of its full existing stockpile of highly
enriched uranium and end all enrichment going forward should be the bare minimum.
Trusting Iran to stick to enrichment below 3%, for supposedly “civilian purposes,” is madness.
On Saturday, The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog group, revealed that Iran seriously ramped up production of 60%-enriched uranium this year, boosting its stores from 274
kilograms to 408 kilograms since February.
That’s enough to crank out a single nuke within two weeks — and up to 10 within months if Iran continues enrichment, which Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said will happen
“with or without a deal.”
President Donald Trump has been firm on two things from the start: Iran will not have a nuke on his watch, but he prefers a deal to the alternative — blowing up centrifuges, an option he’s
kept on the table if Iran’s leaders refuse to bend.
No one can say Trump hasn’t given diplomacy a serious chance; he even told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to bomb Iran while discussions were ongoing, since striking a deal
“could save a lot of lives.”
But Iran has just been buying time, while sprinting full-speed toward a nuke: Hardly the behavior of a regime that wants to get a deal done.
With its proxies across the Middle East decimated, Iran’s rulers plainly figure going nuclear is the best way to guarantee their own safety and start turning the tide back.
The prez was rightly also clear that a deal must come fast, or it’d be Plan B; Tehran is hoping it can still stall long enough by stringing Trump’s negotiators along until it’s too late.
No more overtures. No more compromises. No more fruitless talks.